I watched The Wages of Fear last night. What an amazing film.

Film geek reasons I liked it: It was an action film without action film camera angles or deafening music: the suspense rose solely from montage & pacing.

Political geek reasons I liked it: It showed the futility of capitalism. These men have been spit out of the system and left to die of hunger in Central America. They take a job driving nitroglycerin along a bumpy road, because they need the money to get home. They know they'll most likely die, and that there's no overarching reason for any of it. As one of the men gasps in his last breath, "There's nothing!" The ending is the neatest bit of nihilism I've ever seen.

Best line: "Wherever there's oil, there's Americans!" The Americans are bastards in this film, killing workers through shoddy safety standards. At one point there's an oil fire, and three indigenous people stand bemused as the oil workers run back & forth. We see the white man through their eyes: destroying the earth in his quest for profit.


I told you not to over-moisturize - Yves Montand cradles his injured comrade

Queasy, maybe this isn't so progressive part: gender politics, naturally. The only female character - Mario's lover - gets used & abused by everyone, and she still stays devoted & sacrificial throughout. But she's still a real character with feelings, which mitigates it a little.

Racial politics - my first response was that the film's racist, because the locals are simply observers: pretty naked girls, exotic fat dancers, curious peasants. But now I think that's the point. White men are coming to Central America to exploit, and they're killing themselves doing so. The locals go about their daily business - it's the white men who are driven to murder. At one point, a character says of local women, "They drop from the trees." Racist, yes. But that could also mean that capitalism, which brought those men here, is a wholly separate system. The white men are the foreigners; the indigenous people are the real residents.

It's also important that, when 8 locals are killed in an oil explosion, they start a rally. A white character looks on, asking, "What is this, the revolution?" The local workers are portrayed with complete dignity as they struggle, in contrast to the scheming, drunk white people.


No shifty imperialists here

Hollywood has conditioned us to empathize with main characters. It's more challenging to watch a film about assholes, and then slowly start to see they're human, forced into a world not of their own making.

Cultural studies note: Two of the main characters are Mario & Luigi. Luigi looks like Luigi in Donkey Kong. Or the other way around.