Review of Postman (1995) by Stuart M — 06 Jun 2014

I'm not sure why this film has the bad reputation it does. Sure, it's not the best film ever made, but it's far from being the worst. It's actually pretty good as far as post-apocalyptic films go. I never really buy that kind of film. The world is always so dark and violent, which at least makes sense, but they always go too far and turn it into complete anarchy. The idea that society is just a thin thread which can easily be lost is a compelling one, but not very believable. People want order in their lives and they want to form communities. Just look at the aftermath of the World Wars. Yes there was a lot of violence and chaos, but people reassembled some semblance of ordinary lives in the ruins of their old ones. And that's the attitude this film recreates (more-or-less) rather than the medievalish world of others.

The story is fairly basic: a lone wolf-type survivor gets drafted into a warlord's army. He then frees himself from it, comes across an old sack of mail, and decides to con his way into some free food by pretending to be a mailman from the reformed government. As time goes on he comes to take his imaginary duties more seriously and blah blah blah he acquires followers and learns to be the hero he was only pretending to be. That aspect is probably the least interesting bit of the film. It's been done before and it is a plot device that can be needlessly tedious since you're always waiting for the big reveal when people discover his lie and then he has to prove himself anyway. It's a frankly cheap way of introducing tension, and that tension never feels exciting merely a slow and inevitable march towards some forced climax. The film handles it better than most, but the fact that the last two hours of the film are nothing but this gets a bit grating. I imagine that's the aspect that most critics latched on to when attacking this film, and it's the main reason my rating doesn't go higher. If only Costner had trimmed it by at least 30-40 minutes there would have been nothing to complain about. Not all great films need a three-hour running length.

But in all post-apocalyptic films the details matter. And the details here are very good, from the regular small-town life that the villagers have developed to the military forces of the villain the film just feels more real than most, which seem based on an obscure form of wish-fulfillment fantasy about a strongman surviving in postapocalyptica. I also appreciated the fact that this film appreciates that it's the little things that bind society together. Yes, this can sometimes be cheesy but it doesn't feel undeserved. It's cheesy to us because we take all this for granted. To people who have done without a government for years these ideas would seem revolutionary.

One of the truly great things about this film though is the villain. I've seen soooo many variations of the evil military warlord that I thought there was no room for a new one. But they found a way to make him interesting and sometimes strangely relatable. Bethlehem is a used-car salesman who thinks he's the next Patton or Napoleon. So far, so typical. But what makes him so interesting is how seriously he takes the concept. He reads up on these guys, idolizes them, and tries so hard to become a warrior-poet. He's always talking about the archetype and is attempting to be the best example of it that he can be without really posessing the basic elements of humanity so essential to being truly revered. He even takes up painting, not because he likes it but because every great commander should have a creative hobby. He's so obsessed with the outside form he never grasps the what the role actually means. He's quite mad in most respects as it feels like he's just playing a role he doesn't fully understand and seems to have nothing inside him but the performance. He's a great character and it's really a shame that they end him on such a lame note. They introduce the method of his destruction within about ten minutes of meeting him, and it's soooo obvious and stereotypical that you just can't believe they'd actually go there.