Subject: REVIEW: WATERWORLD

From: [email-masked] (Allan Toombs)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 1995 17:46:30 GMT

WATERWORLD
                         A Post-Apocalypse Classic
                       A film review by Allan Toombs
                        Copyright 1995 Allan Toombs

     WATERWORLD has suffered some very poor press recently.  It seems
journalists can't resist reference to its cost and many professional
reviewers reveal that either they failed to watch the entire movie
(lazy fools they're paid to do this!) or low IQs.  WATERWORLD rises
head and shoulders above the recent crop of action based blockbusters.
Batman Forever and Judge Dredd merely offer a distorted mirror view of
our crime-ridden urban society whereas WATERWORLD carefully constructs
a scenario where the rules of survival are very different.

     Kevin Costner's character, known in true Campbellian-hero style
only as "The Mariner," is the perfect survival machine for this
all-water environment.  He processes his own urine for the water
content (not as some reports state "drinks his own piss") and the film
opens rather daringly with a back-shot of Costner quite obviously
peeing into a container.  As a drifter he pilots a trimaran and trades
anything the sea gives up to him.  One of the director's real coups
here is to make a yacht chase as thoroughly dynamic on film as any
speed boat race.  Indeed a basic juxtaposition of the film is sail
power versus petrol burning craft.  The (for want of a better term)
baddies are called "Smokers" since they eschew windpower and as their
leader Deacon (Dennis Hopper) dispenses an endless supply of cigarettes
(not a comforting film for the pro-tobacco lobby this as the Smokers
are crude and stupid villains).  In this respect the film is far
clearer than the comparable MAD MAX II where both sides are fighting
over and using oil, yet a world oil-disaster is the cause of their
apocalypse.

     At one point in WATERWORLD there is a moment of pure surrealism
as "Peter Gunn" is played and Hopper and his cronies are pushed around
in the wheeless shell of an automobile.  This underlines the totality
of the water shooting throughout the film.  As you assume the mindset
of a water-bound existence areas of pseudo-solid ground become
surprisingly anachronistic and by the end of the movie when the
legendary "dryland" is found I viewed our world of greenery and
wildlife in a new light of enhanced beauty.

     This film definitely follows the currently dominant 3-Act plotting
model and divides thus: In Act 1 the Mariner arrives at the Atoll and
attempts trade but is captured for being a mutant.  As he is being
slowly put to death there is a mass Smoker attack which successfully
breaches the drift-peoples defenses.  In the ensuing mayhem Costner
accepts heroine Helen's bargain to provide escape for her and the
mysterious girlchild Enola.

     In Act 3 Costner rescues Tina Majorino's little girl from
Hoppers stronghold and because of this he and the remaining
drift-people find dryland, although the Mariner chooses to return to
the sea.

     It is Act 2 which distinguishes WATERWORLD from the its fellow
action adventures such as MAD MAX III; BEYOND THUNDERDOME.  There is
a biting sexual tension between Kevin Costner and Jeanne Tripplehorn
that electrifies the screen, her sudden disrobement amidst the
emptiness of the ocean is as astonishing as his rejection of her.  As
my partner Jackie put it "Kevin Costner beating up women and little
girls!"  Portrayed is no ordinary hero but a brutalised man stripped of
any culture by the need to survive.  Costner takes his anti-hero
further even than Mel Gibson's portrayal in MAD MAX II and I started
to wonder if there was a misogynist subtext to WATERWORLD.  Maybe "a
man's best friend is his boat and there ain't no woman good enough for
him" was the film's message?  Thankfully this was not so and the Mariner
turns out to be waiting for real love rather than the ancient bargain
of sex for shelter.  A thoroughly un-feminist middle then, as
Tripplehorn has nowhere to turn within the claustrophobic confines of
the small boat.  The destruction of Costner's gimmick-rigged trimaran
marks the end of this mid-section and amidst the wreckage left by
Hopper's ambush and abduction of the girlchild our antagonistic couple
finally make-love simply because there is no reason not to do so.

     WATERWORLD is quite a long movie (120 minutes) and it would
have been tempting for the production team to make cuts in this middle
chapter.  Thankfully if there were any cuts made they were from the
Mariner's commando style entry of the Smokers' stronghold (the
revelation of which is one of the films most breathtaking moments and
explains sloppy-criticisms of "where does the fuel for the jet-skis
come from" (Kaleidoscope--shame on you Radio Four)).  This sequence is
given a strange narrative air by Majorino telling the Smoker second in
command how "he (The Mariner) has killed lots of people (as Costner
silently dispatches some guards) and he is going to rescue me."  She
announces this as if it was free-form verse and the stealthy
fight-action gains a bizarre poetic edge.

     Finally WATERWORLD boasts a frisson as moving and yet less
sensationalistic than PLANET OF THE APES's Statue of Liberty buried on
the beach moment.  When we descend beneath the waves we are taken
through the watery remains of a modern city we feel not only the shock
of seeing our civilisation in ruins but Tripplehorn's character's
despair that Costner has no source of soil from dryland only what he
salvages.  To me this underlines the emotional surety of the film as
well as its highly involving projection of the future.  Like SEVEN
SAMURAI you are left wanting more, wondering where the Mariner will go
next and what he will find alone out on the ocean.

--
Allan Toombs
http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/bt18/atoombs.html 
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