Plain and simple, I do not love the prisoner drama. This isn’t to say that I’ve ignored the genre entirely, but there is something that I have found personally unpleasant about these narratives, of spending hours watching these (usually) men toil away in their cells and force their masculine aggression on others to get further ahead. I think of recent examples like A Prophet (2009) or Starred Up (2013) that may have these compelling dramas underneath, but again they’re so unpleasant at points that it becomes hard for me to connect. By the time you get to something like A Prayer Before Dawn (2018), you’ve lost me entirely because I don’t love the brutal tales, where madness overtakes reason and sends these men spiraling out of control.
I guess there has to be some gimmick that sells me on the prison drama, convincing me that there’s some value of taking audiences into this unique ecosystem. For me, Papillon (1973) is arguably a high point in this genre, serving as an epic that only becomes more awe-inspiring the further along that it goes. What starts as a solid prison story evolves into something greater. This isn’t the story about the four walls that trap you from the outside world. It’s about the very idea of freedom and how a prison becomes a state of mind, sometimes unable to escape in ways both literally and figuratively.
Take it from Steve McQueen, who starred in one of the best prison dramas The Great Escape (1963) which feels like it exists solely for him to do motorcycle stunts. In all seriousness, it’s just a great story of men working together to overtake the evil forces that seek to hold them captive. Every small detail has a rich personality that makes even the bouncing of a ball into something iconic. It’s the type of quality that made me hopeful that Papillon would be just as good, presenting a man who has the endurance to overcome any obstacle. McQueen was that kind of man, whose stare felt full of testosterone and hid from you any vulnerability. If you want one man protecting you from the “popular 60s actor” troupe, better make it McQueen.
I’m also excited to see Dustin Hoffman in the mix because, by some luck, he became the best actor of his generation. The man has an insane track record going back to The Graduate (196-) where he managed to convey such a diverse group of men ranging from the emotionally closed off to the manic comedy perfection of Lenny (1974) and of course the autistic savant Rain Man (1988). I personally think that there may be more beloved actors, but Hoffman rarely felt like it went to his head, or at least his quality dip isn’t as terrible as Robert de Niro’s.
I wouldn’t call Papillon his greatest performance, but there is something organic about this role that makes you appreciate the chemistry. Given that he had a notoriously bitter relationship with McQueen while on set, it’s amazing that things turned out as well as they did, reflecting friends stuck on an island together, looking out to the waves and imagining freedom that they so desire. But that’s the thing. Freedom is an ocean ride away, swimming from a French island to Honduras. It’s impossible, but the hope of the man draws them together, believing that they could get there in time.
For whatever the story lacks in its mystery (this is based on a true story), it more than makes up for in the wondrous journey that director Franklin J. Schaffner takes the viewer on. It just doesn’t feel that way at first, finding prisoners performing a walk of shame through the streets of France, being ridiculed. Women that likely meant something cry out for them as if they will ever meet again (they won’t). It’s personal despair, like watching the last moments where freedom is within reach. How do you achieve it when so many guns are pointed at your head, waiting for you to step out of line? People will fall down a boarding ramp in the hopes that it lands them in the hospital, free from the labor-intensive hell that waits for them.
One of the film’s greatest components is how it uses an underground economy, fully understood by every criminal being boarded onto the ship. They bargain with money, murdering people who refuse to pay debts. There is so much cruelty in this film that it doesn’t take long for death to become a recurring motif, reminding audiences of the danger for those who step out of line. It becomes harrowing to think that anyone would want to risk becoming a bloody corpse, or a man sent to the guillotine. Who would want that? The only way out is through friendship or having enough currency, which has to be sneaked in rectally.
Nobody called Papillon a pleasant movie. It’s one that is up there with Midnight Express (1978): a masterpiece of the human ambition to survive amid a hellscape that is often dark and cold, turning the common man against each other. And for what? McQueen plays Papillon (French for “butterfly”), a jewel thief wrongfully accused of murder. As he befriends Louis Dega (Hoffman), a counterfeiter, they form a connection that few others have. They believe that together they can afford a boat that will bring them to freedom. Two men with very little resources escaping a high-security prison in a vast ocean. Either way, death seems inevitable.
The journey is an incredible one that doesn’t fully reveal its incredible elements until the second half. When Papillon enters the prison, he’s immediately looking for the exits. You expect him to be planning another Great Escape. You imagine that this will be one of those meticulous narratives where he carries sand out in his pant leg, planning these small ways to get out. It feels like it’s designed to be an action movie with these fantastic moments. After all, who wants to just watch a story about a man rotting away in prison, only ever seeing his common men carried to the hospital with black eyes from disobeying the guards?
To be honest, the first half is good, but one would be forgiven for not finding it exceptional. While the walls have this impersonal, cold texture to them, they’re nothing that has been better seen elsewhere. Papillon doesn’t seem all that extraordinary, especially as he’s carried into solitary confinement, being starved as he fails to provide useful information. The world around him carries on while he exists in the dark, growing pale and losing speech. And yet, he carries on with these hallucinations of his life. He’s judged by a jury that he’s to die because he wasted his life. What it lacks in plot progression, it more than explains why Papillon won’t die in solitary. He will make it through at any cost.
It’s to McQueen’s credit that he manages to create this physical embodiment that has a power to it. You buy that he’s worn by solitary, and yet he has this drive inside of him. It’s a performance that takes the viewer on a journey, finding him dealing with an insular struggle that transcends. It becomes spiritual, especially when paired with Dega’s rationality, believing that cooperation will stop anything bad from happening to him. In fact, it’s helped him weasel his way through the prison system, befriending guards in ways that play to their advantage.
Hoffman isn’t necessarily a breakout star in the first half. He’s a complacent figure who more observes Papillon’s punishing behavior and shows quiet compassion. He’ll sneak him food, giving him opportunities to be treated decently. It isn’t until the second half where he begins to become an interesting character. It’s after the prison break sequence which happens with over an hour left to go.
One has to wonder: what can possibly happen with over an hour of time to go? There is this concern that they’ll all go the way of the many corpses that they cross on the journey. Every step of the way, there’s some caution that reflects humanity’s inability to ever escape this prison. Even as Dega’s fractured foot becomes worse (itself a prison of sorts), there is this dread that entrapment will find itself caving in around them. They exist for so long in this uncertain landscape that every new development feels random, taken from another movie that shows how Papillon’s journey may be harder than he thinks. He may be able to break out of man-made walls, but will he escape leper colonies or a native tribe who treats him with humanity?
So much time passes from the moment that Papillon leaves, and yet the power and desire to drive forward is never lost. He ends the film by looking to the sky and yelling “I’m still here, you bastards!” It’s a perfect way to go out, floating to his next destination. Nothing will ever stop him from his goal. It may have taken him years (perceivably decades), but the very idea of freedom exists in his heart. The fact that audiences don’t ever get to see him there doesn’t matter. In some ways he will always be on a raft in the middle of the ocean, evading potential capture. Even in freedom, is he really free?
It’s an incredible second half that raises this from a pretty good prison drama to one of the biggest masterpieces in the genre. Like the best of them, it captures a story that explores the loneliness of imprisonment, the dreams of freedom, and the power of a friend who can help make these moments more tolerable. While Schaffner’s vision has an incredibly bleak undertone every now and then, it’s used to reflect how close mankind is when they don’t have the capabilities to live a full life. In perverse ways, it’s a compassionate plea for humanity to treat each other better, to make the world a better place.
It wouldn’t be the most farfetched idea to see this as some greater allegory. After all, Schaffner directed A Tour of the White House (1961) for The Kennedy Administration (last seen referenced in Jackie (2016)). He’s also made highly political stories that wear their themes proudly, such as Planet of the Apes (1968), Patton (1970), and later with The Boys from Brazil (1978). His approach to history may be a bit more sensationalist, but it speaks to something in the human spirit, this desire to course correct and capture something humane. Most of all, he does it with such a visual festivity that it becomes compelling entertainment. You wouldn’t expect a prison drama to have such splendor in every frame, managing to use light and shadow so effectively as this way of choking Papillon from the outside world.
I guess for me a lot of the reason that this is a masterpiece is because of how unexpected I found it to be. Once Papillon and Dega broke out, the film became this unexpected journey with many great new characters, introducing a climate that I’ve rarely seen in this context. It’s one that seeks to show how the world outside the prison system has some compassion, desiring to protect each other from harm. While there are some bad people out there, Papillon discovers that those who are free are kind, capable of expressing a love that he hasn’t felt in so long. It’s beautiful in its simplicity, even if it works within the greater context of a man still continuing on a journey with a largely unknown ending.
The film tells us that Papillon made it to freedom. The book that this is adapted from tells us a similar story. But the thing that becomes incredible isn’t only the strength of the will, but how even outside of the prison, imprisonment becomes more of an abstract concept that traps Papillon until the very end. He is determined to escape, symbolized by these islands that can become as small as a raft. In some ways, we’re all trying to escape something, even if it’s more mundane. It puts into context what value we should have in our freedoms, our desire to be happy, and use our life to its full advantage. It’s only when it’s taken away does it truly begins to make sense.
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