The Bounty

The fifth screen version of the storied, ill-fated voyage of the HMS Bounty may not be as successful as the 1935 Best Picture-winning Mutiny on the Bounty with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable, but it is vastly superior to the 1962 remake with Trevor Howard and Marlon Brando. Drawing from sources different than all prior screen versions, this revisionist take on Britain's most infamous nautical insurrection began as the long-gestating dream project of legendary English director David Lean. Working with his go-to screenwriter, Robert Bolt (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter), Lean set out to make two epic films: one called The Lawbreakers that would have covered the voyage of the HMS Bounty to Tahiti and the subsequent mutiny, and the second named The Long Arm, which was to be a study of the journey and the mutineers' account of the incident. Most financiers balked at the idea of making two expensive, highbrow pictures back-to-back. Only maverick Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis thought the projects were doable, and construction began in New Zealand on a replica of the HMS Bounty—exact down to the hand stitching on the sails.

Bolt had a heart attack before the second script was completed, and the project ground to a halt when De Laurentiis pulled out. Lean went to his Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia producer Sam Spiegel to try and interest him in taking over, and Spiegel convinced Lean to combine the two scripts into one film. Lean signed Anthony Hopkins to play William Bligh in what he was now considering doing as a seven-part TV miniseries. In the end, Lean abandoned the picture and went off to make his final film, his adaptation of E. M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India. De Laurentiis, who had already spent a considerable amount of money on development and building the ship, regained control of the project and set it up with Kiwi director Roger Donaldson.

The erratic Dino only knew Donaldson as a screenwriter he'd hired to write a sequel to Conan the Barbarian, which Dino had rejected. Donaldson had made films in his native New Zealand—Sleeping Dogs, Nutcase, Smash Palace—but these were small features with budgets under $1M. He seemed an odd choice for such a massive project (taking over from David Lean, no less), but he relished the challenge and brought the picture in on time and under budget—almost unheard of for a major film with many sequences shot on the open sea.

Lean had wanted to cast Christopher Reeve as Fletcher Christian, as he'd been impressed with Reeves' Superman. But by the time the production came together, rising star Mel Gibson was the co-lead with Hopkins. It's been interesting to go back and read reviews of all the films Gibson did between his star-making turns in Mad Max and The Year of Living Dangerously and his movie star solidification with Lethal Weapon. Critics of the day always complained that he was too pretty or stoic. For all three films he made in 1984—The Bounty, The River, and Mrs. Soffel—I can find at least three critics who claim his miscasting brings down the picture. And here, he taps into his soon-to-be signature crazy man persona, playing Christian as an upright but inexperienced young man who succumbs to his sensualist nature, forsaking everything he once held dear. Hopkins plays Bligh, not a power-mad villain but an expert seaman who loses control of his crew when they stay too long at their Tahishin Island destination. It's more than hinted that Bligh is driven to treat his crew harshly in part because he's unable to indulge in the sexual offerings of the native girls that cause Christian and many of the other sailors to question if they even want to return to England.

The rest of the company is also impressive, with Laurence Olivier and Edward Fox playing the leaders of the court of inquiry looking into Bligh's conduct, which provides the bookend structure for this telling. The Bounty crew includes a young Daniel Day-Lewis, Bernard Hill, and a formidable Liam Neeson early in their careers. Maori actor Wi Kuki Kaa creates a more dimensional characterization of the Tahitian King Tynah than the prior tellings of this story, while the way the island's native women are depicted as gorgeous, bare-breasted, and eager to please certain gets across why so many sailors would be reluctant to sail back to cold, dreary, repressive Georgian-era England.

The major aspect that sets this version of Mutiny on the Bounty apart from its predecessors is that it is based on the diaries of those actually aboard the Bounty and those present at the mutineers' trial, as collected in Richard Hough's 1972 non-fiction book Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian. Unlike the previous films, The Bounty makes a point of showing that Bligh and Christian were friends who'd made voyages together before they sailed on that fateful trip, and it was while they were on the Bounty that Bligh promoted Christian, then a midshipman, to first officer after demoting Sailing Master John Fryer (Day-Lewis). The film's narrative arc explores how the relationship between the two men deteriorated to such a degree that Christian would lead a mutiny against his former friend and superior officer. It also tries to be less glamorous and more accurate about what a mutiny at sea would really be like.

The film's lengthy final act is beyond bleak, with the successful mutineers floating for months with little chance of survival, starving, blistered by the sun, and all too aware that more violence could break out at any moment, just like Bligh and his loyal officers whom the Bounty crew set adrift in an open launch with few provisions and no charts. Clearly, the goal of the filmmakers, from Lean on down, was to illustrate how awful and ill-avised a mutant at sea really is, as well as showcase the ordeal Bligh went through keeping his loyalists alive for weeks on the open sea, successfully navigating more than 3,500 nautical miles to safety. The Bounty succeeds in getting all this across, but I can't say it makes for a satisfying finale to a movie. I was riveted to every frame of this picture, but it's no surprise the movie faired poorly at the box office. It's easy to understand why Lean wanted to tell the story via two films, as that would have opened up multiple structural options. Still, some of those options were certainly available to Donaldson and Ian Mune, the uncredited screenwriter who did the rewrites that merged Bolt's drafts after the original writer had left the project.

The Bounty is most notable for its depiction of Bligh as the wronged party in this tale. However, the film's thesis seems to be that there is as little honor in harsh, self-serving authoritarianism as there is in rebellion. It presents Christian as a man who seems to know he's doomed no matter what course of action he undertakes, and Gibson's mournful shout of, "I am in hell, sir!" as he forces Bligh into shackles while simultaneously trying to prevent the bloodthirsty seamen from killing their former tormentor, perfectly encapsulates this. The first-rate cinematography is by Arthur Ibbetson (Whistle Down the Wind, The Railway Children, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory), and the outstanding production design is by John Graysmark (Ragtime, Lifeforce, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). The movie features one of the subtler scores by Greek synth master Vangelis (Chariots of Fire, Blade Runner, Missing); it's unmistakably a Vangelis score, but it never takes center stage as it does in his more iconic soundtracks.