Adapted from the novel by Malcolm Lowry, John Huston's 8 1/2 and Leaving Las Vegas, Under the Volcano is a tale of inaction around a man who simply and actively refuses to make decisions anymore, choosing to lose himself in a hazy life of constant drunkenness. Set in the very earliest days of WWII in Mexico, it's a portrait of a man who knows, on some deep level, the amount of death about to come into the world and his insignificance in the face of it, his inability to change it. It's almost Peter Weir-like.
Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) is a former British consul to Mexico who has resigned his post but refuses to leave the country. Drunk, he bemoans that his wife has divorced him while teetering from one watering hole to another, taking over the microphone at a Red Cross gathering to inanely babble about the coming death and the Red Cross' incredible needs that will be coming. The trick is that he's completely cut himself off from the world, including his wife who keeps writing him letters that he refuses to open and keeps in his coat pocket at all times. When she does arrive, Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset) finds the broken man who had once been her husband drunken asleep in a dingy bar.
The bulk of the film is the two trying to connect once more as Geoffrey wanders the city of Quauhnahuac while he also interacts with his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews), a reporter who covered the Spanish Civil War and has come to Mexico to investigate Nazi efforts at influence in Mexico. There are a lot of conversations, mostly between Hugh and Yvonne and some locals, about the failure of the fight against Franco in Spain and the burgeoning war in Europe, all while Geoffrey does everything he can to elude the subject and find another drink. There are hints of The Lost Weekend when Geoffrey madly runs around his house, hitting every secret spot, looking for one more drink.
It is the portrait of a man who seems to be drinking because of his powerlessness, who has watched the world go into the worst direction despite his efforts, and all he has to look forward to is death. The talk of the defeat of the Republican forces in Spain (really, communist) while the world watches the rise of Nazism, touching so far as Mexico, is prone to defeatist thinking in certain quarters. It's interesting to see Huston making this in the 80s, I assume it's a reaction on his part to the rise of Reaganism, but it also feels like the angry work of a younger man.
One of the really interesting things in the film is the heavy use of Day of the Dead imagery to help bolster the feeling of the film. It starts with an interesting title sequence (similar to Wise Blood, also produced by Michael Fitzgerald), and it extends deeper into the film as skeletons dot the frame here and there, all while the nihilistic conversations occupy the center of the frame. It provides this interesting contrast between the celebration of death in a positive way with the talk of all-encompassing death that would become WWII (Huston's earlier obsessions over the atomic bomb, unable to be directly mentioned here because of the timeframe, are an obvious shadow over the events in this film).
Geoffrey is forced to confront his inaction, and he does everything to run away from all of it. He throws drinks into his face, eventually running into a bordello and spending time with a prostitute that Yvonne walks in on, breaking her heart since she had come to Mexico to try and reconnect with him. It's a spiral down that ends inevitably.
The film overall is an interesting look at self-destruction in the face of a larger destructive force, of nihilism going to its inevitable conclusion. Anchored by a dedicated performance from Finney, who gives his voice and facial expressions to every little mannerism he can. Bisset and Andrews are the supporting structure to it, acting the straight roles to the manic one provided by Finney, and they are a necessary counterweight. Huston brings his practiced, professional eye to the proceedings as well, offering nothing flashy but just providing a stable canvas on which his performers to play.
Under the Volcano is not Huston's best work, but it's an interesting look at hopelessness and inaction carried by a strong central performance. It's not of great note, but it's something of a throwback to his period around The Roots of Heaven in the middle of his final stage of more mainstream work.
Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney) is a former British consul to Mexico who has resigned his post but refuses to leave the country. Drunk, he bemoans that his wife has divorced him while teetering from one watering hole to another, taking over the microphone at a Red Cross gathering to inanely babble about the coming death and the Red Cross' incredible needs that will be coming. The trick is that he's completely cut himself off from the world, including his wife who keeps writing him letters that he refuses to open and keeps in his coat pocket at all times. When she does arrive, Yvonne (Jacqueline Bisset) finds the broken man who had once been her husband drunken asleep in a dingy bar.
The bulk of the film is the two trying to connect once more as Geoffrey wanders the city of Quauhnahuac while he also interacts with his half-brother Hugh (Anthony Andrews), a reporter who covered the Spanish Civil War and has come to Mexico to investigate Nazi efforts at influence in Mexico. There are a lot of conversations, mostly between Hugh and Yvonne and some locals, about the failure of the fight against Franco in Spain and the burgeoning war in Europe, all while Geoffrey does everything he can to elude the subject and find another drink. There are hints of The Lost Weekend when Geoffrey madly runs around his house, hitting every secret spot, looking for one more drink.
It is the portrait of a man who seems to be drinking because of his powerlessness, who has watched the world go into the worst direction despite his efforts, and all he has to look forward to is death. The talk of the defeat of the Republican forces in Spain (really, communist) while the world watches the rise of Nazism, touching so far as Mexico, is prone to defeatist thinking in certain quarters. It's interesting to see Huston making this in the 80s, I assume it's a reaction on his part to the rise of Reaganism, but it also feels like the angry work of a younger man.
One of the really interesting things in the film is the heavy use of Day of the Dead imagery to help bolster the feeling of the film. It starts with an interesting title sequence (similar to Wise Blood, also produced by Michael Fitzgerald), and it extends deeper into the film as skeletons dot the frame here and there, all while the nihilistic conversations occupy the center of the frame. It provides this interesting contrast between the celebration of death in a positive way with the talk of all-encompassing death that would become WWII (Huston's earlier obsessions over the atomic bomb, unable to be directly mentioned here because of the timeframe, are an obvious shadow over the events in this film).
Geoffrey is forced to confront his inaction, and he does everything to run away from all of it. He throws drinks into his face, eventually running into a bordello and spending time with a prostitute that Yvonne walks in on, breaking her heart since she had come to Mexico to try and reconnect with him. It's a spiral down that ends inevitably.
The film overall is an interesting look at self-destruction in the face of a larger destructive force, of nihilism going to its inevitable conclusion. Anchored by a dedicated performance from Finney, who gives his voice and facial expressions to every little mannerism he can. Bisset and Andrews are the supporting structure to it, acting the straight roles to the manic one provided by Finney, and they are a necessary counterweight. Huston brings his practiced, professional eye to the proceedings as well, offering nothing flashy but just providing a stable canvas on which his performers to play.
Under the Volcano is not Huston's best work, but it's an interesting look at hopelessness and inaction carried by a strong central performance. It's not of great note, but it's something of a throwback to his period around The Roots of Heaven in the middle of his final stage of more mainstream work.