Before watching the 2018 version of Papillon, where a Scorpio is played yet by another Aries, I was very excited. I imagined a modern vision of this rich and adventurous book, with an advanced filming technique. I thought it will be something memorable, especially since Charlie Hunnam and the acclaimed Freddie Mercury’s recently impersonator, Rami Malek, have both a lot of entertaining potentials.
Unfortunately, my disappointment was directly measured upon my expectations. I have been disappointed by the 1973 screening as well, with all the consulting offered by Charrière himself along Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman’s Oscar performances. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, the Best Directing Academy winner for Patton (1971), it can be considered a masterpiece by far, compared with the 2018 version.
Charlie Hunnam as Papillon
[source for all pics: mostly imdb.com + a printscreen]
Plot
I hope you all read the book, Papillon, an unexpected million seller in 1970 and years after that. I read it in English, translated by Patrick O’Brian, who made a great adaptation. I’m sure the original used much more prison slang, less intelligible than what appeared in print. If you haven’t, I assure you that it is great storytelling. You may like the movie, then. The book shows a great soul and very good intentions.
Shortly after Papillon was published, so much envy arose. Here is the selling recipe published by an incredibly benighted guy named Edward Behr on November 5, 1970. On the whole, that’s a very stupid article, I don’t know to whom it served at the time.
“Take a small-time Paris thief. Convict him of a murder he insists he didn’t commit. Cruelly confine him to live to the notorious penal colonies of French Guyana. Subject him to the full range of inhuman treatment. Add rape, sodomy, stabbings and have a horde of red ants attack and devour a helpless guard. Top it all with no less than nine harrowing escape attempts and, voila, you have: Papillon, the hottest book in the French publishing.”
Papillon is more than that. It has to be taken as claimed by the writer, the former convict Henri Charrière. It is adventurous and humanist. The character Papillon has a very good nature, even if it is most of the time darkened by his longing for revenge.
He succeeded to convincing his readers he was innocent, that he has been framed for manslaughter and after a very superficial trial, based on perjury and a lot of bad will from his prosecutors, sent to the prison of St-Laurent-du-Maroni, in the penal settlement of mainland French Guiana, for life.
On the way there, he learned some ropes about the establishment. He became reacquainted with the former banker, Louis Dega from Marseille, whom he knew from before. He learned from Dega that he really needed money and also how to carry them in a highly polished two pieces aluminum device, two and a half inches long and thick as a thumb, which he shoved in his rectum, deep to the colon. In the book, Dega had the equivalent of ten thousand francs in pounds sterling, and Papillon had 5,600 Francs in his charger, also called plan.
Dega got involved in an extreme bonds forgery, and he got fifteen years of hard labor for that. He got arrested and convicted because he made a really stupid and arrogant mistake.
“Listen, Dega, what are you really afraid of? Is it the other cons?”
“If you want the truth, Papi, yes. Everybody knows I was a millionaire. And from there to killing me because they think I’m carrying fifty or a hundred thousand francs around isn’t a very long step.”
“Listen, do you want to make a deal? Promise me you won’t go to the nut house, and I promise I’ll always stick by you. We’ll help each other out. I’m strong and quick, I learned to fight early, and I’m good with a knife. So don’t worry. The other cons won’t just respect us; they’ll be afraid of us. … You’ve got dough, I’ve got dough. I know how to use a compass and sail a boat. What more do you want?”
He looked me straight in the eye…We embraced. The pact was sealed.
Papi and Dega were sent somehow together to Caen, where the convoys for Guyana were formed.
As you see, both movies try to expose Dega as a very frail character and Charrière as a guy with no money and nothing to lose. Actually, none of them were reluctant to their partnership. Also, the penitentiary director who just wanted to “break” Papi, was the one from Caen, months before the real adventure begins. Papillon wanted to arrive as soon as possible in Guyana to try to escape from there.
It was hard, he did a lot of jail and solitary confinement, in French Guyana, on the islands, in Colombia, and Venezuela. He transited Trinidad, he lived with Indian natives in Guajira, he made friends for life.
Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek in Papillon 2018
Both movies say they are based on “Papillon” and “Banco”, the sequel to the first book. Unfortunately, none of the movies touch even slightly what will happen after he escapes from the Devil’s Island, by floating on the coconut shells bags. He was not alone, he pulled it with another convict who eventually died because of his own impatience. After fourteen years, Papillon walks free in Venezuela as a result of amnesty from the President. In France, he was rehabilitated only in 1970, three years before his death.
Papillon 2018 – Cast and Production
In this version, only two characters really count Charlie Hunnam as Henri “Papillon” Charrière and Rami Malek as Louis Dega. With all the allegory and the stubbornness to present what the producers thought of what happened before, everything bad depicted in the movie was worse than the book. The very important aspects, the humility, genuine human empathy, were not even slightly touched.
Was this movie so bad because Malek tried all he could to emulate Dustin Hoffman? Was it bad because they filmed the exteriors in Montenegro and Malta, and the interiors in Belgrade? It was so bland, that if one hasn’t read the book or books, even if never heard of Papillon, can think that all it was in the movie was about how manly and ferocious was Hunnam’s character and how versatile was Rami Malek. Such a waste.
Enormous Success Attracts Matched Resentments
After earning more than $2 million only in the US, rumors spread that Papillon wasn’t a safe breaker but a pimp and a stool pigeon. He was never interned on Devil’s Island, and actually, he isn’t the Papillon character at all.
An article about Papillon and Henri Charrière
… “And a fertile imagination”, say the critics. One former inmate of Cayenne, writing in a French magazine, charged that “Papillon” (so-called for the butterfly tattoo on Charriere’s chest) is little more than a “hodge-podge of all the stories ever told about Cayenne.”
And in a book examining Charriere’s life up until the LeGrand murder, former Paris Match reporter Georges Menager draws a portrait from court files of a pimp and police informer, not someone who was – as Charriere claims – “Always a pure thief.”
More damaging, however, is another, a longer book called “Papillon Epingle” (literally, the butterfly pinned) by French journalist and mystery writer Gerard de Villiers, who maintains that “only about 10% of Charriere’s book represents the truth.”
Papillon 2018 – Poster
Papillon 2018 – Trailer
In the end, I personally don’t recommend this movie, directed by
the Danish Michael Noer, with a screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski, an adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s 1973 work. I say that you better find the book and read it, you’ll thank me.
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