Review of Papillon (1973) by Annie G — 04 Nov 2009

Film #44 of 70 - My dad's favourite film of all time but I had never gotten around to watching it. When this project was announced Dad pledged and I suggested we add this to the film list. Coming in at 2 and a half hours, its not exactly the best film to watch when you are trying to squeeze 70 films into a week, but nevertheless I was very much looking forward to watching it.

Hoffman and McQueen pretty much hold an acting class throughout delivering two fantastic performances. Watching a young Hoffman is always magnetic as he was and still is a clear talent, except here he is a long way off Tootsie and anything to do with infected monkeys.

Today has carried a little bit of a theme, which has interested me. Yesterday seemed to deal a lot with the theme of loss of loved ones (especially the evening films), whereas today, it feels as if the over-riding theme has been good versus evil and the moral choices and ramifications of these choices.

Bonnie & Clyde deal directly with this, Dr Strangelove dances around a very important subject with some tongue in cheek humour and Shane is as clear cut a story about the good guy versus the bad guy in the black hat as you can get.

What has interested me about all of this is that an accidental grouping of films can reveal unexpected themes throughout and I feel like that was it today. Back to the film, its a tough story about a life spent incarcerated, which is a scary thought to begin with, let alone living in isolation or in Papillon's case, in a constant state of attempting to escape.

At its core, its also a story of life long friendship between Papi and Louie, the emotion of which gets carried solely by Hoffman's Louie. Did I mention Hoffman is great in this. Perhaps the film is a little too long, but all epic stories like this tend to be, so its par for the course.

Good film.