Papillon (1973)
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
Written by Dalton Trumbo, Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Starring Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman
Release Date December 16th, 1973
Published August 22nd, 2018
Papillion is considered a classic movie by some but not by me. For me, Papillion is an ungodly slog through unending misery. Sure, the sun occasionally shines but I would not be lying if I claimed that 95% is uncompromisingly bleak. The term torture-porn is a modern term invented to describe the fetishized violence of movies like Saw or Hostel, but Papillion is, perhaps, a progenitor of the term. The violence isn’t graphic but if you get off on suffering, this movie is for you.
Steve McQueen stars in Papillion as the least convincing Frenchman this side of Dustin Hoffman. McQueen is Papillion, a man falsely accused of the murder of a pimp, or so he claims. Aboard a ship to be taken to the French penal colony in French controlled Guyana, some time in the early 1930’s, Papillion meets Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), the most prolific forger in French history. It’s rumored that Dega has money and can use it to arrange an escape.
Papillion becomes a sort of bodyguard to Dega and eventually his friend. The two plot toward Papillion’s escape as Dega believes that his wife is working to get him out of jail and his money allows him some privileges in the prison camp, privileges he would lose if he attempted an escape and it failed. Indeed, Papillion’s first escape attempt fails as he is captured and brought back to the camp by bounty hunters.
This puts Papillon in solitary confinement for an unspecified amount of time though I believe somewhere in the movie it was stated as five years. This section of the movie is pure torture for Papillion and our patience. We watch as Papillion eats bugs, struggles with hunger, is given illicit food, slipped to him via courier by Dega, loses all but all but scraps of food when his supply is uncovered and he refuses to say where it came from and generally suffers for a solid 20 minute chunk of an already too long movie.
When he is finally released from solitary, Dega is waiting to nurse him back to health, or pay someone to do it for him anyway, and Papillion immediately starts planning another escape. It’s pretty much the same escape as the last, only Dega will be going with him this time. Whether it was successful or not, I will leave you to discover. I will say that the escape leads to the only good portion of the movie, we see a leper colony that is frightening yet filled with the only other good people in the movie and a brief glimpse of a life Papillion could be happy with but is, of course, taken from him.
Cruelty, despair, misery are what we face while enduring Papillion. I suppose the film is intended as some kind of triumph of the human spirit stories, it’s based on a novel by a guy who claims to be the real life Papillion, his final escape having worked, but my spirit gave up on the film about half way through rather than anything remotely like triumph experienced. Papillion is a handsome movie but it is not an entertaining or engaging movie.
Papillion is a punishing 2 hour and 30 minute slog. It’s a movie where joy goes to die. You don’t watch Papillion, you endure it. I don’t ask that all movies be happy-go-lucky but I would prefer that movies not be so all-encompassing bleak as Papillion undeniably is. There is one sequence where there is joy and it ends as abruptly as it arrives and the film scurries back to be even more dreary than before.
Has Dustin Hoffman always been insufferable or have I just been in denial all of these years? I had a similar thought that I pushed to the back of my mind when I watched his jerky performance in Tootsie but it was inescapable here. Hoffman’s stagey tics are more pronounced in Papillion than they were when he was literally playing a stage actor in Tootsie. Hoffman’s Dega constantly has bits of little business to do including limping, vocal tics and constantly touching his coke bottle eye-glasses.
I was glad when his character disappeared for a while and his antics were off-screen and that was during the film’s most bleak sequence so you can understand just how much I was loving Hoffman’s performance here. I would rather be in a dank cell with a dying Steve McQueen than outside in the sunlight with the obnoxious Hoffman. His antics cool off late in the movie and he becomes a compelling character but you likely won’t last long enough to care about that.
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If I hadn’t been paid to watch and write about Papillion I would have turned it off rather early on, once I pegged just how dreary the movie was and would remain. I consider it an act of masochism that I managed to watch Papillion all the way to the end. I don’t understand the desire to make, let alone watch, a movie like Papillion. Did director Franklin J. Shaffner just decide he wanted to test the limits of audience patience?
Papillion is being remade and released this weekend with Sons of Anarchy star Charlie Hunnam as Papillion and Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek as Dega. Here’s hoping it’s not another slog through human misery ala the 1973 original or else I am going to need a drink for this one and I don’t even drink alcohol so you can get a sense of my dread here.
