New Myths for Old: The case of The Four Feathers - Movie Review

National Review, Nov 11, 2002 by John O'Sullivan

As the old showbiz joke goes, The Four Feathers is a story so good not even a gifted director could ruin it. The 1902 novel by the English writer A. E. W. Mason has been filmed no fewer than six times; the 1939 Zoltan Korda version has deservedly attained classic status. This is a rattling good tale about themes-love, loyalty, and the conquest of fear-so deeply etched in the human heart that audiences will respond to them even across the boundaries of time and space.

Audiences, perhaps; but can these themes triumph over the political and moral divisions that separate the Victorians from modern Hollywood? Has it become impossible to make a film about imperialism that does not condemn it? Or tell a story celebrating honor in an uncomplicated way? Or describe a conflict between Westerners and people of color without overtones of racial superiority?

The answers to these questions turn out to be always complicated and sometimes surprising. The word from Hollywood was that the 2002 version of The Four Feathers, by the Indian director Shekhar Kapur, would "subvert" the imperialist flag-waving of the earlier versions. And Kapur certainly sets out both to deconstruct the notions of honor driving the plot and to demolish the arrogant assumptions of imperial superiority allegedly underlying Mason's story and the British Empire's adventures in the Sudan. But it is fair to say that the flash and glitter of the imperial subject matter-the scarlet uniforms of the young British officers, the shine on the regimental silver, the ladies' billowing ball-gowns, the still-haunting idea of chivalry-go a long way to subvert Kapur's anti-imperialist intentions.

Uniforms convey their own message. If you want to convey arrogance and cruelty, gray German uniforms are the ticket; formal British scarlet evokes a much more gallant set of associations. As for the anti- imperialist insight that braggart speeches about honor and patriotism often end in incompetence, cowardice, and defeat, that can hardly subvert a story that was about a man's attempt to confront his own fear of battle in the first place. The man in question is Mason's central character, Harry Feversham, a young British officer who resigns his commission a week before his regiment embarks for war in the Sudan. Three of his friends send him white feathers-an accusation of cowardice-and his fiancee, Ethne, adds a fourth, breaking their engagement. Crushed by the social disgrace faced by a known coward in late Victorian England, Harry sets off to redeem his lost honor by rescuing the three friends from various awful fates in the Sudan. Eventually, Harry hands back all four feathers and marries Ethne.

So much for the bare bones of the story. Almost every version of it, however, differs from the others in significant ways. The original novel was a complex love story as much as an adventure-one with two heroes and a heroine, each seeking to behave honorably to the other two. Although she gives Harry the fourth feather and resolves never to see him again, Ethne does so with the knowledge that her love for him is still strong. When his best friend, Jack Durrance, returns from the Sudan a blind hero, she accepts his proposal of marriage from high- minded motives of duty and pity. But Durrance, previously a slightly dull fellow, deals with his blindness by developing greater powers of sympathy and insight. The second half of the novel describes how he gradually uncovers Ethne's motives and breaks their engagement on the grounds that self-sacrifice cannot be the basis for an enduring marriage. Harry returns a hero, Ethne marries him, and the novel ends with Durrance sailing back to the East, alone but having overcome his blindness and able to move freely in the world again.

Korda's 1939 version was a masterpiece of cinematic compression. It moved the events of the novel from the 1880s to Kitchener's successful campaign against the Khalifa in 1898 (when the young Winston Churchill took part in the last British cavalry charge at the battle of Omdurman). Otherwise the film was very faithful even to the book's occasional complexities: It gave a full account of the frustrated courtship of Ethne and Durrance, and it explained very clearly the motives that prompted both Harry's resignation and his subsequent redemption. To pass in the Sudan as a local without Arabic, Harry persuades an Egyptian doctor to brand his forehead with the mark of the Sengalis, a Sudanese tribe whose tongues were torn out for rebellion against the Mahdi. Explaining his plans, he reveals that his former colleagues see him as a coward. "So be a coward and be happy," says the practical Egyptian (the hint of a stereotype here, perhaps). "I was a coward and I wasn't happy," Harry replies-and gives a subdued smile, for, having just voluntarily endured a very painful ordeal, he knows that he has already conquered his fears: a fear of cowardice itself, of letting down his comrades, and of disgracing his military family, rather than a simple fear of battle.