Molokai

Produced by Grietje Lammertyn, Tarsicius Vanhuysse
Starring David Wenham, Derek Jacobi, Sam Neill, Kris Kristofferson, Leo McKern, Peter O’Toole, Aden Young, Kate Ceberano, Alice Krige. 
Original music by Heinrich W. Berger, Paul Grabowski, Wim Mertens Cinematography by Nino Martinetti 

Director Paul Cox has frequently been referred to as Australia’s most serious film-maker. With such intense filmic explorations of character as The Man of Flowers (1983), A Woman’s Tale (1991) and the documentary The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky (2002) we have come to expect portrayals of extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Unlike most of Cox’s films he did not write this one. Moreover, he differed with the Belgian producers on so many areas of the film that eventually he was fired. Cox considered the version shown in most countries to be marred and only now in 2002 does this director’s cut have its first Australian release.

Despite the production conflicts the film is inspiring and impeccably acted by a superb cast of high calibre actors in a wildly beautiful setting. Molokai is the story of Father Damien, a Belgian Catholic priest who in 1873 volunteered as a missionary to the leper colony on the island of Molokai in Hawaii. For sixteen years he was single-handedly the spiritual, emotional and physical shepherd to a people largely abandoned and shunned by their families, the Church and the Government. It was a continuously selfless act of humanity made without reservation or conditions based on a simple faith that God would spare him from the disease as long as He had need of him. In 1889 Fr Damien himself died of leprosy. The film spans those years from his first interaction with lepers in Hawaii until his death.

David Wenham plays a sincere, complex Fr Damien, who burns passionately to serve his fellow man in God’s service and also suffers from lonely melancholy. Impatient and fiery-tempered with tight-fisted authorities, in direct contravention of his bishop’s orders not to touch anyone, he open-heartedly embraces the lepers in his charge. In the face of so much deprivation and suffering, compassion is at first the only thing he can give.  While others recoil from the weeping sores, the deformities and the smell of rotting flesh, Damien moves close without hesitation, his personal connection with those who long to be touched easing some of their hideous burden. Incidentally and ironically, the Belgian producers had issue with these scenes, demanding that the more confronting and graphic scenes be cut.

A young girl’s leprosy is met with typically inhumane treatment. Her personhood forfeited, she stands silently while the doctor lifts her torn shift with a pointer and talks about her in the third person. The fearful, disapproving 19^th century attitude was based on the wrong assumption that leprosy is the fourth stage of syphilis and thereby God’s judgment on the unrighteous. Ironically, after she is condemned to Molokai, Damien finds this erstwhile innocent in a filthy distillery shack, among men and women whose lawless degradation is a defiant response of society’s rejected as well as a seeking for touch and what little pleasure they can grasp.

Wild contrasts in the stupendous beauty of the island itself include deep blue ocean, fierce waves breaking thunderously on rocky volcanic shores and steep mountains clouded by mist. Damien is as awestruck by it as by the misery and privations he witnesses on his way to the abandoned, decrepit church. Relegated to the windy end of the island, the colony comprises dark, ramshackle huts of weathered scrap timber stolen from those too ill to prevent it by those not yet so powerless. Food is short where people doubt their health will allow them to harvest what they might plant. No comfort is afforded these sufferers as they scrape subsistence from paradise.

Scenes shot here are filled with life and the ever-present wind. Contrasting scenes in government and church offices in Honolulu where Damien sends requests for timber, food and nursing nuns are artificial and stilted, rich with an effete and cultured indulgence. Sam Neill plays elegant Prime Minister Gibson with just the right degree of deceptive charm and smooth political double talk. The plump pink faces of the sanctimonious Church hierarchy (Derek Jacobi and Leo McKern), beautifully match the hot pink silk buttons on the Bishop’s cassock. Fr Leonor (Jacobi) positively shines with greed as he writes to Damien advising him that they are withholding financial donations sent to him while simultaneously exhorting more consideration of others.

Bishop Maigret (a rotund, sleepy Leo McKern) is the only priest sympathetic enough to hear Damien’s confession on the quarantined Molokai, though he’s reduced to hearing Damien shout his sins in French from an open rowboat alongside his sailing ship. While basic needs on Molokai are ignored by those who have the power to help, the Government builds a showpiece hospital on Honolulu staffed with doctors and nursing nuns originally promised to Fr Damien’s colony. Japanese baths are installed there while Molokai has no running water.

Kris Kristofferson plays a tough, non-infected resident farmer supplying fresh food to the colony, pragmatic enough to keep infection at arm’s length. Chris Haywood is Clayton Strawn, a drunken thief who finds redemption in love. A moving performance of heartfelt loving kindness is that of Princess Lilioukalani (Australian jazz/pop singer Kate Ceberano). Tom Wilkinson is remarkable as a lay priest who assists Damien. Aden Young, as a young doctor bringing a new medical treatment, shows how we ourselves might react to the stench of maggot-ridden bodies lying untended on the floor of the so-called ‘dying hut.’ Other memorable performances include Peter O’Toole as a dying Protestant English former medical assistant, an acerbic cynic Damien is unable to persuade to move from his wind-wracked lean-to with its soothing view of the sea, but wins as a friend.

“You can’t die till I’ve converted you!” jokes Fr Damien to him, and later, showing his loneliness, “You can’t die, I’ll have no-one to talk to!”

Insults follow injury even to the end when Damien, suffering advanced leprosy, is examined for syphilis and nuns promised him five years earlier finally arrive. Thankfully, extreme pathos is offset by some detachment allowing a documentary feel to the film, though at times the intentions of the director are indistinct. One or two beginnings of storylines fail to have any follow through and there is some rather strange subtext involving the nuns and Fr Leonor. However, the incongruous Honolulu scenes looking as though they belonged in another, more genteel period piece actually add to the directorial irony.

The force of Molokai is in the simple premise that one man determined to make a difference can do so and inspire others with the power of integrity and compassion. Add to this a background of breathtaking scenery, a superb musical score by Paul Grabowsky and astonishing performances and it has elements of a classic.

© Avril Carruthers                                                    June 20^th 2002

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