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 This one is a "lavishly-produced classic about the enchanted paradise of Shangri-La where time stands still." They say that the set was supposedly the largest ever to be constructed in Hollywood and that it cost the modern-day equivalent of "$30-$40 million." 1937, 134 minutes, DVD
When Hollywood isn't making its end of the world movies telling us Americans what crum bums we are for fouling up the environment and/or developing some hideous weapon of mass destruction that unexpectedly goes on the blink wiping out everyone or stirring up man-eating plants or re-animating corpses, it's serving up movies about "paradise" that are merely thinly disguised socialist pablum. Watching films like Lost Horizon with its distinctly "capitalism sucks" message reminds me that the right wingers in this country that constantly wring their hands, gnash their teeth and drag their knuckles over all the sex and violence the hippies in the liberal media are intent on selling our children are completely missing the point. First of all, sex and violence made this country what it is today - great! We should be celebrating our love of guns and big hooters since that merely affirms our belief that our families should be secure as well as demonstrates our healthy mother fixation. It's these wishy washy movies full of crybaby sissies who pine for a slower, more relaxed pace where no one ever wants for anything and everyone is all equal and stuff that's the real stick in the eye of Lady Liberty.
First of all, you can dang sure bet that the guys' that made this movie didn't do it for free or didn't redistribute the wealth they made off it to everyone in equal shares. That tells you right there what a bunch of pie-in-the-sky hooey all this egalitarian claptrap is. These movies where paradise turns out to be some secluded Commie collective with nice weather smell like Stalin's old jackboot to me for a couple of reasons. First of all, like most guys whose family came to Gary, Indiana on the Mayflower, we don't cotton to a bunch of quitters. That's what all these guys looking to shack up in some foreign paradise are - a bunch of four flushers who are too weak willed to pull their own weight. You don't like this country or how it's run? I'm not even going to tell you to love it or leave it like I ought to because the beauty of the system is that you can work to change things if you want. The whole "dropping out of society" bit doesn't really impress me and is just an easy way to ditch your responsibility as a citizen. The other thing that irks me is that for some reason paradise is always portrayed as if guys busting their humps to get ahead is a bad thing. I don't know about you, but my idea of paradise is having more stuff than my neighbor. If I lived somewhere and the Joneses were dead even with me, I'd be really depressed. How am I supposed to measure my self-worth if I can't compare the year and make of my SUV with those social climbers next door?
There is a movie somewhere in here that's stirred up all these patriotic feelings and it's truly epic in the sense that it's longer than two hours. And that might be the real problem with the paradise that's depicted in this film. I might have been able to tolerate all the feel good mumbo jumbo about how everybody is really polite to everyone else and how all the Tibetan natives were forced to learn English (say, this is paradise, isn't it?) by some pushy Catholic priest (let's hope he taught the native boys how to say "bad touch") if it all wasn't so blasted boring. I think that director Frank Capra let that whole "slow down the pace" ideal of his paradise seep into his filmmaking in this one, because this one edges ever so slowly from leisurely to glacial to La Brea Tar Pit paced. It took him the first half hour alone to establish that the plane carrying star Ronald Coleman and his supporting cast was being hijacked to paradise. (If this place is so great, why do you have to commit an act of air piracy to get people to join up?)
Once their plane finally crash lands in the mountains not too far from the hidden paradise of Shangri-La, Ronald and the rest of the survivors get rescued by a guy named Chang and his people. Chang is a white dude who is at peace with himself in paradise (we know this because he speaks in very unemotional steady tones usually reserved for pod people) and he leads Coleman and his group to Shangri-La. Shangri-La is a village nestled in between a bunch of mountains in remote Tibet where the weather is surprisingly balmy and the women are surprisingly attractive (hey - this is paradise - no dogs allowed!). Chang explains that they are all welcome to stay with them until some outside porters arrive and can lead them back to civilization. It sounds like a pretty sweet set up until everyone hears that Chang has been waiting for these porters for the last two years. (It is slow-paced in paradise, huh?)
This news is met with varying reactions by the group. Coleman plays Robert Conway, a famous British guy who's written books, been a soldier, a diplomat, and is up for the job of Foreign Secretary. He seems to have it all and be really fulfilled. Therefore, it's only natural that deep down, he feels that his existence is rather empty. This means that he's pretty much primed to drink the Kool-Aid and join up with Chang's cult. I don't suppose it hurts that as soon as Conway showed up in paradise, he was already making eyes at one of the local gals (uh, by local, I of course mean a white gal that lives there, not a native gal. Just because it's paradise, doesn't mean we have to forget all our racial hang ups does it?). Everyone else in the group though is initially not terribly excited by this turn of events. Most notably, Conway's younger brother periodically throws temper tantrums and shoots a gun to express his displeasure at being cooped up in paradise.
Gradually, everyone else in the group comes around to how great life in Shangri-La is. The other three people in the group from the plane barely merit mentioning in spite of the length of the film, because they're barely dealt with. One guy is a businessman on the run from the law since his company collapsed. Though initially intrigued by all the gold in the valley, he somehow becomes interested in building a modern sewer system for the village. Another guy who couldn't wait to get home suddenly loses interest in making sure the dinosaur bone he found in China gets back to Britain and begins teaching a class on geology to the Tibetan kids in the village. I don't know about you, but paradise sure made me sleepy. Even less was done with the sole woman on the plane. She had a terminal illness and somehow she felt better once she hung out in Shangri-La and took her make up off. Though I never caught on to it in the movie itself, the supplementary materials on the DVD mention that she was a prostitute. Maybe paradise made me forgetful as well as sleepy. It didn't really matter though since nothing else happened with that girl.
The movie dinks around with Coleman's character and his acceptance of life in Shangri-La for most of the running time. He babbles with Chang. He flirts embarrassingly with his girlfriend. He even meets the High Lama himself! It turns out that the High Lama is really the 300 year-old Catholic priest that founded Shangri-La in the first place and he imparts all sorts of wisdom onto Coleman, though I didn't hear a word the old fool said because I was laughing too hard watching Coleman acting interested in what this old coot had to say since this sucker didn't even have his front teeth! Looks like paradise could use a refresher course on proper dental care. As is usually the case with most of these spiritual leaders, once Coleman comes to him asking for help in dealing with his brother the old goober tells him that it's Coleman's problem and croaks soon thereafter leaving Coleman in charge of the whole freaking village!
The movie creates an artificial climax involving Coleman's brother leaving Shangri-La with Coleman inexplicably and unbelievably going with him. Capra must have known that none of us would really care that the obnoxious brother or his dunderheaded girlfriend were leaving so he had to have Coleman's character accompany him to try and rouse the audience, notwithstanding the fact that that was completely out of character with everything Coleman had expressed in the previous two hours. I suppose that it's fitting end for a movie that spends an inordinate amount of time (and by looking at the extravagant sets, money as well) expending a lot of verbiage on a lot of nothing. The various speeches by everyone didn't reveal any great truths and the big philosophy of Shangri-La turned out to be "moderation in all things." Thanks for that, but I think I can practice that right where I'm at and not give up the three hundred channels of my digital cable or the convenience of a 24 hour grocery store. The whole isolationist message is defeated on the basest level when its revealed that Shangri-La imports everything from the outside world in exchange for gold. So how is this different than any other cult compound, other than its remote geography? It's all just a bunch of self-important gum flapping that's as toothless as its dearly departed leader was.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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