Mountains of the Moon: A Re-inscription of the Colonial Master Narrative :: Movie Film Essays

Mountains of the Moon: A Re-inscription of the Colonial Master Narrative      If Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke were alive in 1989 to see the release of Bob Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon, what would their response to the film be?   Would they agree with the way Rafelson’s film depicts their remarkable journey into Africa to find the source of the Nile River?   Would they agree with the way the film dramatizes their relationship with each other?   The answers to these questions would help a great deal in determining whether Rafelson’s film about Burton and Speke’s expedition was accurate, or whether his film was an attempt to sensationalize their story to increase its reception.   Unfortunately, Burton and Speke are not around to answer these questions, which makes an analysis of these issues difficult.   Therefore, rather than analyzing this film from a historical perspective, this critique is concerned with what story Rafelson’s film tells.   How does Rafelson’s movie shape audience’s opinions about Burton and Speke as characters?   Does his story, through visual rhetoric, retell or reinterpret Burton and Speke’s story?   What role does Africa play in Rafelson’s film?   The answers to these questions should help determine whether Rafelson’s film is a re-inscription of the colonial master narrative, or whether it is a post-colonial critique of European colonization.    Mountains of the Moon sets out to recreate the adventures of Richard Burton (Patrick Bergin) and John Hanning Speke (Iain Glen).   The plot of the film focuses on Burton and Speke’s relationship, and their journey to discover the source of the Nile River.   One interesting characteristic that separates Rafelson’s Mountains of the Moon from previous attempts to describe Burton and Speke’s expedition is that Rafelson’s film introduces a human element into Burton and Speke’s relationship; an element that remains the focal point throughout the entire movie (Campbell, www.theparamount.org). As a result, Rafelson shifts the focus of the movie away from the business aspect of the story, and compels audiences to focus more on the friendship that develops between Burton and Speke.   Sidney Pollack’s Out of Africa shifts in the same way.   In Pollack’s 1985 film, audiences find themselves more concerned with the film’s love s tory, than with the Baroness’s coffee plantation in Africa.   This shift occurs not by accident, but rather as a deliberate attempt by Pollack to tell a particular story.   Therefore, Rafelson’s film deliberately shifts to allow him to tell his story: a story about â€Å"Two strangers made friends by a savage land.