Franklin J. Schaffner
Papillon

THE REVIEW

-"Yours is the most terrible crime a human being can commit. I accuse you of a wasted life!"

-"Guilty".

I reflected so much that I wasted a lovely evening and a probable flirt in wordplay and strange seduction techniques. The only thing I fondly remember was the "madman" of the moment (you know that typical character who talks to himself and is promptly ignored by everyone, right?) who was carrying a screwdriver. Maybe he fixes his own wheels? Well, I don’t. I tried to think of the last beautiful thing I did because, you know, the feeling of emptiness leads you to remember... and then I thought of the most beautiful book I've ever read: "Papillon" by Henri Charrière.

I was 13 or 14 years old and the summer was to be spent at home with my grandmother... restlessness was appeased by this formidable volume. Some time ago, keeping in my heart the memory of the hallucinatory adventures of this man (which, by the way, are real), I came across the movie. For me, the difficulties of dealing with the film from a technical standpoint are many, so I won't.

The actors are nothing short of Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman. The former plays the so-called "Papillon," that is, Henri Charrière himself, and the latter his best friend, his fellow sufferer. In short, the story takes place in what was the worst of prisons, Devil's Island in French Guiana, and the protagonist's continuous attempts to escape from it. As far as I'm concerned, the film is very reductive, focused on the escapes, the exciting adventures, and the mistreatment suffered by the prisoners.

In short, the whole time you're rooting for Papillon, a poor soul who, apart from a few mistakes, was fundamentally good, indeed I'll tell you more, even cheated by life! However, there are two extremely theatrical and meaningful scenes. One is the desert scene, Papillon is fully dressed and in the distance, he sees the jury that sent him to prison. Shouting, he approaches them, asking why he was punished given his innocence, why he was judged guilty of something he didn't commit. There, I got the chills...

In this dream, it is clear that the protagonist clarifies with himself the reason for his suffering, bangs his head against what he perhaps feared to admit to himself. He realizes his mistakes, which are not obviously religious or legal in nature, but personal.

The second scene is set in France, he is still well-dressed and is acclaimed by everyone, celebrated. Suddenly the ground becomes sky, turns upside down, and he finds himself upside down, with his dead companions, wondering if he was dead. Both moments that I quickly described are hallucination-dreams he has during his isolation confinement.

Madness, solitude, and the lack of life around lead him to forget and to indeed feel dead. The cruelty and intransigence of the guards and warders, the physical and psychological violence, the dirty work, and the thick walls around remind him of what he must do, the only thing to do: escape.

Lovely film but above all, a wonderful book.