Paul Kemp wakes up to a day he'll soon forget in "The Rum Diary."
(Bruce Robinson, 2011)
October 28, 2011
by Joel Crary
I’m looking over the notes I took while watching “The Rum Diary,” and a few choice words stand out: “Bowling alleys.” “Bejewelled turtle.” “Cock fighting.” “Hitler speeches.” “The cop we set on fire.” “Eyeball narcotic.” And my favourite: “Hermaphroditic oracle of the dead.” Never in a million years did I think I’d be writing down these words in these combinations today, which must betray my ignorance of Hunter S. Thompson – an author I’ve never read, but could pick out of a lineup of writers immediately. He’s certainly a writer one could imagine populating a lineup, not least for crimes involving the above.
But that impression comes from the legends of Thompson, products of his wicked prose. “Diary” is based on an early work that went unpublished until 1998, nearly 40 years after it was written. Disenchanted with America, journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the film adaptation of his “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”) arrives in San Juan, Puerto Rico, intent on writing for the San Juan Star. When we first see him, his eyes shoot open on a too-bright Puerto Rican day to reveal a burst blood vessel. I’ve had one of those, and they’re the kind you get only after a terminally unadvisable tango with liquids of ill repute.
The paper is a shambles, serving as little more than a rag for tourists, its sweltering offices staffed by drunkards and pushing out trite pieces about champion bowlers. Kemp’s editor-in-chief Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) chastizes Kemp for his cynicism and abundance of adjectives. The journalist befriends Sala (Michael Rispoli), a photographer vaguely reminiscent of “Fear and Loathing”‘s Dr. Gonzo, who puts Kemp up in his shitty apartment and makes a little money in cockfighting on the side. Then there’s Moburg, a ghastly human being more chemical than brain matter, his eyes like coins placed over the lids of the dead. He’s played by Giovanni Ribisi, who may pull off his best work here, thoroughly commanding the screen in each of his scenes.
The men find themselves in varying degrees of trouble as they go looking for stories and increasing amounts of alcohol around San Juan. Kemp’s minibar tab skyrockets, so he begins to swig from a homemade still. An argument turns to a high-speed chase before giving way to fire-breathing and a 3 a.m. date in night court. Kemp and Sala smash the holy hell out of their car, and then do it again because they have no alternative. One character calls for speeches of the Fuhrer on vinyl to celebrate the procurement of more drink. A few eye drops of a certain drug produce a hallucinatory effect in which lobsters in a tank create the perfect metaphor, or so these people think.
There’s also some business about a group of rich men bent on exploiting the region for dollars. The ringleader is Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), who keeps Kemp in Chevys and per diems as long as he stays true to his agreement to play up plans to build a garish hotel complex on a nearby island. Sanderson’s fiancee Chenault (Amber Heard) is the type of girl who signals an emotional undoing, if her attraction to danger doesn’t get her killed first. She’s drawn to Kemp, maybe because he looks more like Depp than Thompson. But then, like all novelists, even failed ones, Thompson was creating a character.
The business stuff tends to drag a bit, keeping “Diary” from being one of the more electrically paced films of the year. Kemp’s misadventures are 140-proof craziness; their seeming disconnection, rather than scattering the film’s plot, become the plot, reflective of the effects of drug and drink. Director Bruce Robinson, renowned for another alcoholic pilgrimage flick in “Withnail & I,” shoots the proceedings as though his lens were fashioned from a liquor bottle. There’s some hardcore idealization projected onto Kemp’s lot in life, to be sure, but Depp plays him as a writer operating under an admirable principle – the reader, processing things from a place of sobriety, has to understand. Strip away the illicit habits and Kemp’s a pretty upstanding guy, if not necessarily one who can always stand up.
“Diary” does its best to pull back the veil on brands of insanity inherent in sociopolitical systems by surrounding shady corporate deals with a laundry list of oddities. The antagonists are Bastards with a capital B, oppressive forces of greed that threaten to derail the soul of America. Thompson’s prose, adapted skillfully by Robinson, exits his characters’ mouths like shot bullets, in part to make us understand how Kemp comes to find his voice amidst the excesses of tyranny. He observes, he reacts, he writes. And when the adjectives don’t quite fit, he finishes the bottle.
