Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 30-January-05
Spoiler Rating: Low

Mountains of the Moon (1990)

"If I were a man, I'd be Richard Burton."

So says Isabel (Fiona Shaw), the only woman of note in "Mountains of the Moon," and I know exactly where she's coming from. She isn't speaking of Liz Taylor's old paramour but rather Sir Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890), explorer, linguist, and first-class man of the world who, among other things, helped lead the expedition that discovered the source of the Nile. "Mountains of the Moon" tells the story of that expedition through the eyes of both Burton (Patrick Bergin) and his co-leader, John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen). The two men were very different in background and character but together made history of a most memorable kind.

In the 1850s central Africa remained unknown to the western world and Britain was eager to be the first to claim its treasures. Funded by the Royal Geographical Society, Richard Burton had begun to make inroads into the continent when he met John Speke, an aristocrat whose primary occupation was game hunting. The film relates how the two survived an attack by natives that bonded them as friends, and, after a brief sojourn at home, returned to Africa intent on finding the river's source. They traveled with a crew of indigenous hands and a translator (Paul Onsongo) whose knowledge supplemented the more than 20 languages which Burton spoke fluently. In addition to potentially hostile tribes, their months-long trek was plagued by disease, exhaustion, and the natural dangers of the open plain.

Rather like the explorers' lives, the movie moves back and forth between exotic lands and bustling London, where Burton met and married Isabel (sexier here than she reportedly was*) and where both men tried with varying degrees of success to handle the repercussions of fame. Although the most exciting moments take place in Africa, it's during the British scenes that the viewer can put Burton's and Speke's personalities into clearest perspective. Above all, "Mountains of the Moon" is a study of two men who went beyond the normal compass of human experience, even though only one of them possessed the nature of a hero. Bergin ably conveys Burton's lust for life as tempered by a capacious and open mind, making him a rare example of someone whose perception embraced the world and everyone in it. By the end, when Speke falls prey to the Victorian version of tabloid sensationalism, it becomes apparent that a man's physical journeys contribute only in part to his greatness. "Mountains of the Moon" is thus a character drama wrapped in a historical adventure. The movie creates an indelible impression that men once risked their lives to discover the source of the Nile, and that one of those men was Richard Burton.

*According to Edward Rice's biography of Burton. The movie is based on William Harrison's book about the expedition and the journals of Burton and Speke.

Copyright © 2005 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.