Film: The Rum Diary
Country: USA
Year of Release: 2011
Director: Bruce Robinson
Screenwriter: Bruce Robinson
Starring: Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart, Amber Heard, Giovanni Ribisi
Review: Peter Machen
♥♥♥
The three-way partnership between Hunter S Thompson, Johnny Depp and Terry Gilliam that was Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has become one of the most well-loved cult film of the last few decades, its mix of Thompson’s drug-fuelled insanity, edgy direction from Gilliam and an utterly committed performance from Depp providing a fairly accurate rendition of Thompson’s revolutionary text. Those expecting more of the same with The Rum Diary are likely to be disappointed. For the festering surrealism and tinges of insanity that came to define Thompson’s later writing and public persona are largely absent here in this rather light coming-of-age tale. The Rum Diary is an early work from Thompson, written in the early ’70s but only published, with the encouragement of Depp with whom Thompson became friendly, in 1998. The story tells of Thompson’s early days as a writer trying to break through the non-confrontational mediocrity of the journalism of the time. Although Thompson is already more than a little fond of alcohol and whatever else he can stuff down his gullet, he is only just beginning to embrace the balls-to-the-wall bad behaviour that came to define the ground-breaking Gonzo journalist.
The opening scene of the film does indeed introduce us to a Hunter that seems quite familiar. About to head off for a job interview – and for what will effectively be his first day at work – the young writer, given the fictitious name Paul Kemp for the purpose of the narrative, wakes up more than a little hung-over, his eyes bloodshot and his mind confused. Kemp is on his way to the San Juan Star, a financially precarious paper that runs out of Puerto Rico and whose primary purpose is to provide vacuous, colourful pieces for consumption by American tourists.
Anti-American sentiment in Puerto Rico is running high at the time, no doubt a response to the presence of cutthroat American business interests who see the locals as little more than fodder to their commercial concerns. Appalled by the inequitable goings-on, Kemp becomes an unlikely crusader against the money-grubbing American interests, even as a crew of businessmen try to seduce him into writing copy for them. Gallivanting around the islands with a pair of newspaper buddies from the Star (Michael Rispoli and Giovanni Ribisi in full-on idiot mode), Kemp consumes vast quantities of the local rum, whose effects are enhanced by the occasional hallucinogen, which he pops down his throat with an enthusiasm that would later make him one of the world’s most famous drug users.
But compared with the full-on delirium that, pared with a caustic view of American politics and commerce, would become Thompson’s trademark, life in Puerto Rico, much like The Rum Diary itself, is fairly uneventful. Depp keeps most of Kemp-stroke-Thompson to himself, and the script delivers little of his interior life. So, while this brief episode in the varied and unhinged life of Hunter S Thompson is clearly important, in that it allowed the young writer to find a voice that was to become one of the great American voices, it is not a particularly rich source of entertainment.
In place of Terry Gilliam, the modern master of surrealism, we get Bruce Robinson, who as director of the much-loved cult film Withnail and I, is already well versed in the alcoholic and the absurd. But Robinson has little to work with here, and the result is a film that, while clearly a labour of love, is curiously lacking in narrative substance.
There’s very little wrong with The Rum Diary, and I imagine that most fans of the Gonzo journalist will want to see it. And indeed I’m glad I saw it. But it added virtually nothing to my knowledge of Thompson and shed precious little light on one the 20th Century’s most deranged and fascinating minds.