Quills (2000)

                               QUILLS
                  A film review by Mark R. Leeper

               Capsule: More enjoyable as a simple
          exercise in Grand Guignol than for the
          unoriginal theme, this is a rather cliched story
          of a rebel blamed for society's ills when it is
          really the establishment itself which is at
          fault.  A good cast pits Geoffrey Rush against
          Michael Caine.  But the film is more for fans of
          Jimmy Sangster than for those of Robert Bolt.
          Rating: 7 (0 to 10), low +2 (-4 to +4)

This year there were two films about the infamous Marquis de Sade and his imprisonment at the mental asylum at Charenton. There was Benoit Jacquot's more reserved SADE and Philip Kaufman's QUILLS. Both tell the same oft-repeated story as such diverse films as GREAT BALLS OF FIRE and THE PEOPLE VS. LARRY FLYNT. Each of these films tells the account of somebody notorious in his own time. But, we are told, the REAL evil was that of the establishment that tried to suppress and crush these free spirits. The world has come to tolerate what the outcast was doing and the real villain was not the free spirit but the world that wanted to suppress him. There probably are few other ways to tell the narrative of someone punished for free expression from the viewpoint of a world that now tolerates free expression. It would be hard to tell the story of the Marquis de Sade at Charenton any other way in a world that now tolerates Gangsta Rap that is just a violent. Though Peter Brook's 1966 MARAT/SADE is a film that escapes the cliched just about as well as it could be done.

It is the early 1800s and Napoleon is Emperor of France. The infamous Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) has seen the excesses of the Revolution and the Terror that followed. He has incorporated that horror in his "sadistic" writings. Now he lives imprisoned but in luxury at the Asylum at Charenton under the sympathetic but ineffective care of the Abbe Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). All he needs to engage his bizarre fantasies is paper, ink, and quills. Coulmier uses argument and what he sees as reason to try to reform his patient and bring him to God. Coulmier argues for restraint and virtue; De Sade is the prophet of unrestrained hedonism and fulfillment. Sade's therapy also involves his staging of innocuous plays with the inmates as actors. Naturally he subverts these plays in any ways possible.

But Sade is an angry spirit who vents his furies by continuing to write his lurid and explicit sexual fantasies. For him writing his fantasies is an irresistible compulsion. His laundress Madeleine (Kate Winslet) manages a tidy business smuggling his fiction to a courier who takes it in turn to be published. The stories sell and are enjoyed all over France and the Emperor Napoleon wants to see this affront to public decency squelched. He sends an alienist Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) to Charenton. (Alienists were the forerunners of psychiatrists like alchemists were the forerunners of chemists.) Royer-Collard obtains real results by torturing patients nearly to death and forcing them to give up their insanity. Royer-Collard is a respected man and recently has taken as a bride the reluctant Simone (Amelia Warner) who is about a third his age.

The screen has yet to provide a really hypnotic and effective de Sade. Such diverse talents as Kier Dullea, Klaus Kinski, Patrick Magee, Daniel Auteuil and the great Conrad Veidt have played the man, but it was (with the possible exception of Veidt) never played by someone who combines the whimsy and malignancy that the role requires. Rush has some power in the role, but even he falls short. Michael Caine represents a much more urbane and administrative evil and does a sufficient job but seemingly without his heart being in it. Kate Winslet of TITANIC fame plays the laundress transfixed by the notorious author. Joaquin Phoenix as a benightedly idealistic cleric is also acceptable but uninspired.

Sadly the theme of this story is over-familiar and tired from over-use. Where this film stands out is its ghoulish Grand Guignol vision of the tortures of the asylum and its enjoyably unpleasant anti-establishment view of the early 19th century. And perhaps in that de Sade would have appreciated it. I rate QUILLS a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. There were two additional treats for me. And it is a pleasure to see seasoned character actor Billie Whitelaw playing as the laundress's blind mother. Also being in the telecommunications industry myself, I enjoyed seeing the early telecommunications fiasco.

                                        Mark R. Leeper
                                        mleeper@lucent.com
                                        Copyright 2000 Mark R. Leeper