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 HAWAI`I,
THAIS, AMERICANS, AND AUSTRALIANS ARE TRASHED IN BROKEDOWN
PALACE
Summer is rarely a time for release of serious films with
explicit political agendas. A possible exception might have
been Brokedown Palace, directed by Jonathan
Kaplan, whose films have been twice nominated by the Political
Film Society. This film, however, appears to have started
with some good ideas in a story by Adam Fields that was trashed
during screenplay rewrites by David Arata: Imagine two foolish
girls from Ohio, Alice (played by Claire Danes) and Darlene
(played by Kate Beckinsale), taking a trip abroad as a high
school graduation present. Soon after arriving and seeing
the sights, they decide to go to the top hotel in town for
a swim, pretending that they are hotel guests. Soon, they
are charmed by an Australian named Nick Parks (played by Daniel
Lapaine), who offers to take them to another exotic vacation
spot (Hongkong), unaware that he plans to use them as decoys
to draw the police away from his "mules," that is, paid smugglers
on the same flight. As Alice and Darlene attempt to board
the flight, a substantial amount of heroin is found in Alice’s
hand-carried luggage at the airport. They are both arrested
with much fanfare, cannot defend themselves, and are both
sentenced to 33 years in prison. An American lawyer, "Yankee
Hank" (played by Bill Pullman), milks their parents for a
$15,000 retainer but fails to get them released, and American
Embassy officials provide no help either. Eventually, Alice
accepts responsibility for the crime so convincingly in an
audience before the reigning monarch of the country that he
allows Darlene to go free. However, the film appears spitefully
to settle personal scores regarding a true story (but the
story is made up!) rather than to build a generic case against
something needing redress. First, the girls originally had
tickets to Hawai`i but Alice persuaded Darlene not to go because
she perceived it as too "middle class," which makes one wonder
what the director and writers have against the Aloha State.
Then, why vilify Thailand, the venue for the film, rather
than neighboring Malaysia and Singapore, where the certain
penalty is death? Arata even went to Thailand to interview
prisoners, and a daft request to do the filming in Thailand
was denied because of the obvious dishonor to a proud people
and country. In actuality, the filming transparently is in
Manila, which apparently suits the aim of locating a sleazy,
rundown urban environment that is not at all typical of far
more affluent Bangkok. The American lawyer wavers between
being a saint and a shyster, so what does that prove?
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Clearly heroin was found in the hand-carried luggage.
The film hints that the hotel porter who loaded the luggage
planted the heroin with instructions from Nick; but Alice
never checked to see why her hand-carried luggage gained so
much weight, so we are also led to believe that Darlene may
have betrayed Alice, although another explanation is that
the heroin was planted by a mule who had never seen the two
girls before while they left their hand-carried luggage unattended
in the boarding lounge. Why should filmviewers sympathize
with cocky girls who lie to their parents, behave like ugly
Americans in the early part of the film, and later protest
their innocence? The Drug Enforcement Agency officer at the
U.S. Embassy (played by Lou Diamond Phillips) is curiously
portrayed as unconcerned with the fate of two fragile teenagers
and even with cracking down on the drug trade. Thai officials
are portrayed as corrupt, crude, dishonest, and untrustworthy
but not brutal, though the king shows compassion. The Thai
prison is seen as overcrowded, but reasonably clean despite
inevitable cockroaches. Parents and friends of the girls prove
to be ineffectual, though upper middle class Darlene and her
parents eventually blame her plight on lower middle class
Alice. Although the story seems to be a collaboration between
admirers of the 1978 film Midnight Express and
last year’s Return to Paradise, the film is
a flawed hybrid about silly girls who are easily outsmarted,
hardly a plot to receive praise from feminists. The title,
which presumably refers to the architecture of the Thai prison,
may be found in a recent novel that tells a very different
tale, which might have made a better film.
MH
POLITICAL
FILM SOCIETY INVITES NOMINATIONS FOR AWARDS
Members of the Political Film Society can nominate feature
films released in 1999 for awards in the following categories:
democracy, exposé, human rights, and peace. Nominations close
on December 31 each year, and voting will take place in the
first two months of the year 2000 for the film that best raises
political consciousness in each of four categories.
NOMINEES
FOR 1999
EXPOSÉ:
Bastards, Three
Seasons
HUMAN RIGHTS:
The
General's Daughter, Hard,
Xiu Xiu
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