Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Burn! (1969)

After trying it out in the frustratingly boring Mutiny of the Bounty (1962), Marlon Brando's British accent is back in Gillo Pontecorvo's Burn! Thankfully, this time it's in the service of a much better movie. After the success of The Battle of Algiers (1966), Pontecorvo takes the earlier film's exploration of guerrilla warfare used to combat colonialism, and transplants it into a story of a slave revolt, orchestrated by Brando on behalf of a British tea company, on a fictional Caribbean island in the mid-19th century. 

The result is an effective commentary on powerful nations and companies using idealogical ideas as a shield when pursuing their own interests. Brando's good, and there's a fine Morricone score. Really, the only beef I had with the movie was that, despite repeated reminders that the island has been under Portuguese control for centuries, the locals only speak Spanish!

No comments:

Post a Comment