“The Four Feathers” is the latest film from Indian director Shekhar Kapur, whose grandiose previous offering “Elizabeth” was a rich costume drama laden with well-developed characters and an intriguing plot.
“Feathers” is a rich costume drama. Period. The film, based on a novel by A.E.W. Mason, has been portrayed onscreen six previous times, most definitively in a 1939 picture.
Its story is pretty simple: Harry Faversham, played by Heath Ledger is the main character. His father is a general, and he has been in military school all his life.
Harry is engaged to be married to the beautiful Ethne, played by Kate Hudson. However, when his regiment gets their orders to ship out to Africa, he resigns his commission, drops out of the army, and is branded a coward by his friends.
Back then, when people thought other people were cowards, they sent them white feathers. Three of his friends do this, and Ethne sends a fourth.
Devastated, Harry goes to Africa to redeem his name, shadowing his old regiment and trying to help them in any way. A native warrior named Abou, played by the superb Djimon Hounsou, helps him on this task.
It is his second consecutive role in an epic film playing second fiddle to a white man on a quest for redemption (Gladiator); both films would have been a lot better if they had paid more attention to characters like Hounsou’s and less to the stale, formulaic plots from which they were constructed.
The film is graced by good cinematography, which depicts well the British Army’s foray into the heart of the African desert, including a pretty fantastic battle scene towards the end of the film. Other scenes, like a throng of people in a Sudanese prison, are shot superbly as well.
What hurts the film is the fact that in an epic, the audience should care about the main character or other characters in the movie. I sat there for two hours not really caring whether Harry won or lost.
Ethne is a shallow moron, so the audience doesn’t even care if Harry gets the girl in the end. The script isn’t good enough to prop up the actors, and the actors aren’t good enough to prop up the script.
The only character I really cared about was Hounsou’s, and his role as nothing more than a side-kick was a Kiplingesque insult, which was baffling considering the film’s Indian director.
Maybe I just have a bad attitude. If you, like me, ever took a course in English literature in the age of the British Empire, do not go to see this film. You will see right through it and then want your $8 back.
However, if you would like to see nothing more than a bunch of swashbuckling Brits trying to “civilize” the unruly natives, then you might not be disappointed.
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