I wish I could write something worthwhile whilst on a drinking binge, it’d make my life a whole lot easier, but unfortunately I have to be in a period of sobriety, get up very early in the morning and quickly soak myself in bad coffee before my brain starts working and the words start drying up. No rum, wine or beer for me.
Then again, writing isn’t my livelihood, it’s currently just a hobby, but I can imagine that when you’ve got a writing deadline to keep to in order to earn money to buy food and you find yourself just not in the mood to type anything then, for some, alcohol might be the only way forward.
The Rum Diary is set in a world populated by men with furious writer’s block. They work for a newspaper they don’t read and have to write articles about stuff they don’t care about. One day they’ll get out, one day, but right now the editor’s holding their paycheques and nothing’s flowing, so they drink until something does flow. They have to write bullshit and so they get into the state where they talk bullshit.
The film’s a mixed bag of Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas hedonism and Withnail & I brotherly comradely. If it all feels like the work of a man who was drinking heavily whilst adapting it to the screen then, fear not, because writer/director Bruce Robinson was (after writer’s block ended a six year sober spell). Robinson is an avid researcher and, if you read the Smoking In Bed collection of interviews with him, a great raconteur; it’s just a shame he’s remembered most for his least researched (but personally experienced) film. The Rum Diary has a lot of background and depth to it, even though it rarely emerges on the surface, but you feel the weight of the thinking behind it, you can feel that there could be a million footnotes to each scene.
But the film struggles to juggle three plots at once: a romance, an insight into journalism and a drama about corruption. Each is paid off and tied up nicely, but none seem to be the driving force of the film or the energy behind it’s creators. The strongest aspect of the film is the world that these plots inhabit; Robinson has deftly carved a real universe for us to indulge in with it’s mix of sweaty alcoholics and sharp suited egomaniacs. We don’t feel like we’re on a set or behind a fenced off location, we’re in there with the characters taking notes and pictures for tomorrow’s paper and risking life and limb to find a bed for the night.
Johnny Depp “reprises” his Raoul Duke from Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, in spirit anyway. He plays frustrated novelist/journalist Paul Kemp on the cusp of inspiration and drug dependency. He’s young, handsome, idealistic and still chasing girls. The collection of layabouts he meets make him seem like the straight laced one, especially the marvellously vile but somehow loveable Moberg, who Giovanni Ribisi plays to terrifyingly brain-fried perfection.
There are a few bumpy rides in the script. Some characters seem to share something we’re not seeing on screen and by the end there are tearful goodbyes from people who don’t seem capable of tearful goodbyes. Have they all really shared so much? They had a few adventures and nearly got sent to prison, but I don’t recall seeing them bonding on an intimate level.
Never mind, I’m sure it all makes sense if you’re drinking.
I recommend The Rum Diary as a ship-in-a-bottle representation of a time, a place and a way of life that few would genuinely want to experience for themselves. The only glamour in this world is found amongst the people who fence themselves off from it and live inside a bubble with no real connection to the outside world. The film shows you the difference between simply existing and experiencing life and all it’s joys and horrors.
Savour it.
Oh and I wrote this review whilst drinking a bottle of red wine… any good?
4/5
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