The Emerald Forest (film)
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| The Emerald Forest | |
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| Directed by | John Boorman |
| Produced by | John Boorman Michael Dryhurst Edgar Gross |
| Written by | Rospo Pallenberg |
| Starring | Charley Boorman Powers Boothe Dira Paes Meg Foster |
| Music by | Brian Gascoigne Junior Homrich |
| Cinematography | Philippe Rousselot |
| Release date(s) | 1985 |
| Running time | 110 min |
| Language | English, Portuguese |
| IMDb profile | |
The Emerald Forest is a 1985 English language film set in the Brazilian Rainforest. It was directed by John Boorman and written by Rospo Pallenberg. It is based on a true story.
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[edit] Synopsis
Powers Boothe plays Bill Markham, a dam engineer who has moved to Brazil with his family to complete the construction of a large hydro-electric dam. The construction of the dam requires large areas of forest to be cleared, even more to be flooded. Its completion will bring more people to the areas who will clear the jungle for agriculture and living space.
Markham takes his family to the edge of the forest for a picnic one day, to show them the jungle. It is then that an Indian from one of the indigenous tribes known as the Invisible People notices his son, Tommy, aged seven, has bright green eyes the colour of the forest. The tribesman decides that it is unfair to leave the child with these strange people, who, in his opinion, are destroying the world with their constructions, and abducts the child. Bill Markham pursues them, but his son is gone.
The film then jumps ahead some ten years, and the dam is nearing completion. Tommy, or Tommé as the tribe call him, now played by Charley Boorman, has become part of the tribe that he lives with, adopting their language, culture and way of life. His father later finds him but discovers that he is not the son he once had. When Tommé's tribe is later threatened by another tribe, and the near completion of the dam, Bill decides to help his son so that the way of life he has adopted is not destroyed.
[edit] Style
The film is clearly motivated by the destruction of the rainforest, but apart from the impact on the environment and the local wildlife, it examines the fact that a way of living which was natural to human beings for many thousands of years is also being destroyed. Scenes exploring the culture and spiritual beliefs of the tribespeople give the viewer an idea of how South American people lived in the times before widespread colonisation.
[edit] Criticism
The film was promoted as "based on a true story", but was apparently embellished out of all semblance to reality. According to film critic Harlan Ellison in his book Harlan Ellison's Watching, attempts by the SCAN library reference/research company to get background information on the real story revealed that Rospo Pallenberg's original screenplay was based on several stories [1], including an article in the Los Angeles Times[2], about a Peruvian laborer whose child had been abducted by a local Indian tribe and located sixteen years later almost fully assimilated. Pallenberg's agent told SCAN that while Boorman claimed to have read the original Times article, he hadn't, but was simply working from Pallenberg's screenplay. According to SCAN, Boorman told NPR's All Things Considered that the son was still living with the tribe in 1985 and identified the tribe as "the Mayoruna", yet detailed anthropological studies of that tribe do not mention an adopted outsider.[1]
Ellison's notes on The Emerald Forest take Boorman and Embassy Studios to task for promoting the film as "based on a true story", which he felt was done merely to attract audience attention. He further disparaged the fact that the protagonists were changed to upper-class Americans on the grounds that an audience would be unable to identify with Peruvian actors. [1]
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Ellison, Harlan, Harlan Ellison's Watching (Underwood, 1989), pp. 407-409.
- ^ Leonard Greenwood, "Long Hunt For Son Ends In Success, But --" In the Los Angeles Times, October 8, 1972, section F, p. 10. Reprinted at http://www.richardandmimi.com/truestory.html, website accessed July 19, 2007.
[edit] External links
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