IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (M. Rechtshaffen) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tallerico) review
AVClub () review
Papillon [2018] (directed by Michael Noer, screenplay by Aaron Guzikowski based on 1973 screenplay [wikip] [IMDb] by Dalton Trumbo [2015 film] [wikip] [IMDb] and Lorenzo Semple, Jr based on the books Papillon [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] and Banco [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Henri Charrière [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is another remake, here of an already dark (if largely true) French "Devil's Island" prison tale, that no one was really clamoring for.
I suppose prison and prison break-out films, probably the best of which in the United States in my lifetime was the Stephen King based film The Shawshank Redemption [1994], like other "genre films" speak to us on a deeper subconscious level. If we feel trapped, in need of breaking free from something, but to do so would be very "complicated," then I suspect these kind of stories would be appealing. And if we feel that we live in a time that feels more oppressive than others that we've lived through, then the metaphor of "Prison" and its attendant "Darkness" would again "speak to us" in a way that in happier times it would not.
And this film as well as its 1973 antecedent is _plenty dark_. The current film begins by reminding us that its chief protagonist Henri 'Papillon' Charrière (played in the current film by Charlie Hunnam) was no saint. Indeed, he was safe-cracking hoodlum tied-up in the Paris underworld of the early 1930s.
But like perhaps the Marvel Comics "Deadpool," he wasn't all bad. He too had a girlfriend who loved him. But when one "plays tag with the Devil" one can get burned. And so it was, perhaps out of petty spite, perhaps because of simple convenience, his immediate (mob) boss had him framed for the murder of an annoying henchman he had to dispose of. So said boss had the henchman killed and ... then had the police pick up Charrière for the crime.
'Cept this was France of the 1930s, a France that couldn't agree on much of anything except ... if you turned out to be a criminal you _really_ deserved to be punished: Convicted felons were put on prison ships and transported across the Atlantic to ... penal colonies along the alligator / malaria infested jungle coast of French Guiana ... basically to die. Even after finishing their _pointless_ but extremely _hard labor_ sentences, former inmates were expected _to stay_ there in French Guiana for a term as long as their original sentence, doing ... exactly what? Most inmates apparently didn't live that long to find out. Apparently 40% of the inmates sent to French Guiana died in their first year.
So ... as I was saying, this was _not_ a cheerful story. And one immediately could understand why inmates would really, really want to escape, and go to extra-ordinary lengths to keep hidden the few valuables that they had. The current version of the film was more explicit about this than the 1973 version was (though for its time, the 1973 version, was plenty dark as well).
Repeatedly, I was saying to myself "Okay, this is probably where I'd just hang myself, or plunge myself in front of an alligator hoping to quickly die."
And then I remembered that actually the Old Testament Joseph had found HIMSELF in prison, betrayed first by his brothers and sold into slavery, then denounced falsely by his Egyptian slave-owner's wife and ... found himself at his lowest point in the Darkness of an ancient Egyptian Dungeon with ONLY "his dreams" to keep him company AND ... it turned out that it was through his (there in the Dungeon) _learned ability_ to "interpret dreams" that eventually got him out of that Dungeon, all the way up to Pharoah's court and into a position where he could actually save his brothers [Genesis 37, 39-]. And both the nation of Israel and Christianity exist today because this man, who NO ONE would have blamed if he "just gave up," _chose to continue to live / try_ anyway.
So I reminded myself that while we're "here" in this life we really should never give up, that despite everything God has a purpose for what happens (and that all will ultimately turn out okay, if not in this life then in the next). Indeed, there's a _far happier_ passage in the Book of Acts, in which Saints Paul and Barnabas were locked-up in a Dungeon as well, but with the presence of the Holy Spirit in their hearts, even in the Darkness of Midnight there, they literally "Could not Keep from Singing" [Acts 16:16-40] ;-).
In any case, the story of Henri Charrière aka Papillon (Butterfly) is a dark if compelling one. And I suppose the Viewer is reminded that through the French would consider themselves along with us in the United States to be the paragons of freedom-loving democrats -- we with our "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," they with their "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" -- the French, like us (think Guantanamo or how we treat the homeless people in our country), could also be brutally cruel to people they decided not to like or respect. Still Henri Charrière aka Papillon (Butterfly) chose not to give up.
I'm glad that the prison system of Devil's Island is itself now ... dead, lying on the ash-heap of history.
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