Les racines du ciel

THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN, John Huston's 'Save the Elephant' African drama, based on Romain Gary's ponderous novel, was a costly, torturous misfire about which even Huston himself had little positive to say ("The pictures that turn out to be the most difficult to make, usually turn out to be the worst - like ROOTS OF HEAVEN.") While the story, of an almost fanatical idealist and his international band of rag-tag followers, fighting against the poachers who were hunting the species to near extinction, was a timely one, the production suffered so many calamities and setbacks that what finally reached the screen bore little resemblance to the initial concept. But what a back story it had!

Originally intended to star was William Holden, who was, in real life, an impassioned activist concerning Africa and it's wildlife. With Holden and Huston attached to the project, an all-star supporting cast was easily recruited, including Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Orson Welles, Paul Lukas, and Darryl Zanuck's newest 'protégé', Juliette Greco. Then Paramount politely informed Holden that he had unfulfilled obligations to the studio, and they would not release him to make the 20th Century Fox production. With the other talent under contract, and an inflexible location 'start' date, Fox faced the dilemma of no acceptable 'leading man' being available at short notice...and ended up casting British character actor Trevor Howard in Holden's role. Howard, however, had no 'marquee' value, so Errol Flynn, in a decidedly secondary role, found himself the 'star' of the movie!

Huston arrived in Africa with Darryl Zanuck (the often jealous producer may have been a bit nervous having Juliette Greco working with world-class lotharios Huston and Flynn), and the 140-degree inferno quickly took a heavy toll on the cast and crew. Eddie Albert collapsed with sunstroke, and everyone except Huston and Flynn, who had each brought prodigious amounts of alcohol to consume, were soon suffering from amoebic dysentery. With the frequent production delays, Huston went big-game hunting, and philosophized to the world press. Flynn and Huston, both larger than life personalities, started arguing on set (considering the quantity of alcohol they consumed, it was not surprising!), and Flynn dared the director to fight him. While it might have been an interesting contest, twenty years before, when Flynn was in shape and a talented amateur boxer, he was long past his prime, and Huston, who had actually been a professional boxer in his youth, flattened the actor with one punch.

It was NOT a happy production!

The end result of all the suffering was a film that lacked cohesiveness, with unresolved subplots, and poorly defined characters. Huston would move on to a western with Burt Lancaster and Audrey Hepburn, THE UNFORGIVEN; Zanuck dumped Greco and began preproduction on his epic, THE LONGEST DAY (featuring NEW 'protégé', Irina Demick); and Flynn, after a brief recurrence of malaria, would produce and star in the abysmal CUBAN REBEL GIRLS, and would be dead in less than a year.

THE ROOTS OF HEAVEN was a disaster, for all involved!

It's really amazing that the film crew went to so much trouble to make this movie. After all, they went to the hellishly hot and rather primitive country of French Equatorial Africa and filmed it on location- -and because of this the film looks great. Yet, inexplicably, at the same time the movie looks so incomplete and sloppy at times-- particularly when it came to many of the characters. As a result, the film's great message is muted and far less effective.

When the film begins, a hunter has already killed four elephants and is about to kill more when he is attacked and beaten up by Morel (Trevor Howard). It seems that Morel is outraged by the wholesale slaughter of African animals (in particular, the elephants) and he's sick of sitting back and doing nothing. Soon, he goes to see the governor and begins circulating a petition to stop the slaughter--mostly to no effect. So, he and a few followers decide to take the law into their own hands. They burn ivory warehouses and attack hunters--shooting them in the butt! And, in one of the few funny scenes in the movie, they storm a ritzy party and deliver a well-deserved spanking to a society dame who delights in talking about all the elephants she's slaughtered.

All this sounds very timely and important, right? Well, yes...but the film manages to take a great idea and make the least of it. While Trevor Howard is fine in the lead (though he's billed third!), many of the other characters are underdeveloped and wasted. Instead of seeming like real folks, they seem like they are doing a walk-on--like many celebrities that appear and disappear in a Muppet film! Flynn got top billing though he was barely in the film at all. And, when he was on camera, he pretty much played himself--a dying alcoholic (he died a year after this film was made). Orson Welles is an interesting character-- yet his change of heart from hunter to conservationist seemed bizarre and confusing--again because his part was severely under-written. Eddie Albert appears out of no where late in the film--and has a few good moments but is otherwise quite out of place. And, the same can be said about MOST of the rest of the cast! You would have thought that the writer, director and producer would have noticed this big problem. With better writing and directing, the film SHOULD have earned an 8 or 9. Instead, it's just an overly long and forgettable film.

By the way, I found this film of particular interest because I just got back from a photo safari in South Africa. In my trips to this country, I was surprised how few animals remain and how those that do are confined mostly to game reserves. Also, while the elephants are the subject of "The Roots of Heaven", the biggest problems today are the poaching of the rhinos and the near-extinction of species such as the African Wild Dog. My advice is go soon to visit Africa soon as some of these animals simply might not be there in the near future.

"Turgid philosophising"... "raddled Flynn"... no-one seemed to have a good word for this film, known chiefly for the number and variety of ailments suffered during its filming, and I certainly wasn't expecting much.

Nobody told me "The Roots of Heaven" could be funny.

Nobody told me the script was ironic and self-aware, knowing what to say and what to leave unspoken and when to wear its passion on its sleeve with the straightforward and very English eccentricity of its leading character; tinged with idealism, with heroism, and with cynicism alike. No-one ever mentioned, oddly enough, that there were even any environmentalists in the 1950s -- with uncannily accurate prescience, the plot even ties in the anti-nuclear cause. Greenpeace would have had a retrospective field day!

And as for Flynn, he is having the time of his life stealing every scene he is in, whether with a quizzical eyebrow or a moment of sudden intense sympathy; the part is a gift, but he makes it something more, with the old expressiveness that always underpinned the laughter and heroics of his days as Warner Brothers' leading man. His late-career performance in "The Sun Also Rises" (which, for my money, really is turgid philosophical stuff) has been proclaimed as 'Oscar-worthy' by those eager to prove he had straight acting talent, but to my mind he shows greater depths here.

Trevor Howard is the undoubted star, carrying much of the film single-handed. He is superbly convincing in the linchpin role of the Englishman who sets out on an unfashionable one-man crusade, and -- in a tale whose wry sensibilities would not be out of place at Ealing Studios -- finds himself inadvertently the victim of human nature's instinct both to canonise and to desecrate. The character has convictions, but he is neither unworldly nor a fool, and Howard makes us believe against the odds that this unassuming type can change people. His performance is absolutely central to the film's credibility, and he makes Morel not only believable but likable.

The main flaws of which I was aware are the way that several strands seem to disappear abruptly unexplained at the ending (what of all those journalists who were about to arrive? What of the American's photographs, surely valuable evidence?) and a handful of blue-screen shots against poorer-quality backgrounds that are very obvious when viewed at cinema scale -- it might have been better to have used quick cuts back and forth between the characters and the action, rather than attempting to project them into the picture.

So far as the overall standard of the film was concerned, however, I was extremely favourably surprised; I've seen several turgid, would-be meaningful African epics, and this certainly isn't one of them. Intelligent, humorous, lightly ironic, but also genuinely stirring and mythical, the end product may have disappointed John Huston, but it was far better than I had been given -- even by the cinema's own programming material! -- to expect.

This John Huston's movie is maybe not his ever best, but for me it is definitely one of my favourite from the ASPHALT JIUNGLE director. It is so dark, gloomy, even if it remains more or less underneath. And of course the last role of Errol Flynn is the highlight, even very sad, distrubing for his herds of fans, of this gem. I have not read the Romain Gary's novel, but this film produced by the mogul Daryl Zanuck is a turn in Huston's filmography. It is in the mood of the sixties, more than the fifties, the end of a world. And animal lovers, elephants in particular, will be enchanted, moved by this bittersweet story. I definitely love this film, so awesome for my taste.

This was an excellent film based on my all-time favorite novel of the same title. Both novel and film were ahead of their time in their concern for the fate of the African elephant specifically and the sustainability of the earth generally. The cast was superb; Trevor Howard and Juliette Greco were perfect. (But then, so was everyone else involved.) An important theme in both novel and film was the tendency for others to analyze Morel's motives through their own eyes. Thus some thought him politically ambitious, some supposed that he detested humankind, and others found other motives. I believe his actual motives were purer, simpler, more altruistic, and altogether as he stated them. I would like to have used this film in my university classes, but like an earlier reviewer I regret that it was not possible to find it. That's a great shame.

Given the apparent unavailability of the film, I highly recommend the book - if you can find a copy! Occasionally I have challenged bright students to tell me why the character Father Tassin is so interested in learning everything he can about Morel. To help them, I have lent them not only the novel but a short book about the real-life "Tassin." One or two succeeded in making the connection and thus understanding the work at its most profound level. And it truly is profound, once you understand that connection.

Incidentally, author (and screenplay writer) Romain Gary lived an adventurous, unique life which made him just about as interesting as Morel. War hero, winner of France's highest military and literary honors, literary prankster, tragic political victim, and much more.