Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Here's a wonderful comedy that needs to be re-evaluated by as many people who can muster
the imagination to give it another try, as it's the romantic equal of
I Know Where I'm Going, and goes neck and
neck with Groundhog Day in the Useful Philosophy department. For some mysterious reason,
it was critically trounced and rejected by audiences back in 1990 - Savant's even read
a 'hip' treatise on the movie industry for that year where the author made it an example of
idiotic and worthless moviemaking. This reviewer has no response to that.
If the rest of this piece gets a bit enthusiastic, let's just say this is one of Savant's favorite
films. I've yet to show it to anyone who didn't warm up to it mightily, and as I've got friends and
family who delight in consistently rolling their eyes at my taste in pictures, that's a strong
endorsement.
Synopsis (spoilers):
Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) works in a demoralizing drudge job for a medical-supply firm,
under the petty tyranny of boss Frank Waturi (Dan Hedaya). After losing his nerve on his previous
job as a fireman, he's become a chronically congested and miserable hypochondriac. A visit to
mysterious Dr. Ellison (Robert Stack) confirms Joe's worst nightmares - he's dying from a terminal
disease. Awareness of his imminent death brings Joe back to life, so to speak, and he quits his
job and goes out on a date with DeDe (Meg Ryan), a fear-constipated co-worker. In the morning,
Samuel Harvey Graynamore,
an eccentric millionaire industrialist (Lloyd Bridges) shows up at Joe's door with a wild offer.
Graynamore needs an essential resource, from the Waponis, a weird tribe on an island in the South
Pacific. They won't cooperate unless Graynamore provides them with a sacrifice to appease their Volcano
God. That's where Joe comes in - he's given a sheaf of credit cards and told to go on a spree on his
way to certain doom ... he's going to die anyway, so why not a short, lavish, glorious life instead
of a slow painful demise?
John Patrick Shanley is a popular playright
whose scripts for Five Corners and Moonstruck earned him high praise and got him
the opportunity to make this film and the disappointing The January Man. Both were perceived
as dismal flops, but Joe versus the Volcano has accumulated an impressive cult (sorry, no
other word applies) following. Its
website was one of the first big movie fan
sites, and has been on the
Savant Links page since the beginning of
this column. It's not just the usual pap but has a number of compelling essays analyzing the
film.
And Joe versus the Volcano is extremely worthy of analysis. It's heavily stylized, composed
of only a few scenes. Nothing remotely realistic happens, and the picture dotes on a mannered
artificiality that apparently communicated nothing to the 'hip' audiences of 1990. The opening,
with the giant doors of the American Panascope Company ("Home of the Rectal Probe") opening to
admit a legion of workaday zombies, evokes Metropolis. The show starts in this
expressionistic mode, with Joe's coworkers reduced to soulless Pods in a greenish
half-world of bad flourescent lighting. With the logic of a fairy tale, it moves to other styles,
staying off-balance all the while. Most scenes are accompanied by brilliantly chosen pop music -
Ray Charles, Brasil '66, My Fair Lady, all united only by a refreshing refusal to be
ordinary. Nothing we see is 'credible', yet it all makes story sense: the recurring motif of the
jagged lightning bolt; the palmy
island-with-a-volcano first seen on a novelty lamp; an exaggerated giant Blue Moon
(shared with Moonstruck) that attests to the power of Nature, which to Shanley
equals God. And then there's the Duck. 3
From its cheapo font main titles, Joe versus the Volcano is visually deceiving. Shanley sets
up brilliantly composed scene shots that express just the right mood, and moves on. Coverage is for
wimps.
The slow zoom back outside Dr. Ellison's office to reveal the tableau of Joe hugging a passerby's
giant-sized dog, is wonderful. New York as seen from the Staten Island Ferry is a fantasy wall of
colored lights, and the glowing sunsets from the deck of the sailboat are equally artificial. Joe
dances to music from a transistor radio while adrift on the ocean, and the screen is just an
expanse of sky with this goofy, ukelele-playing guy doing The Swim for his own amusement. The
details are great, too. There's a wonderful on-the-town sequence in New York that ranks among the
best (especially this year). In one magical moment a woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty,
totally blue, steps into a shot. LA, by contrast, is reduced to an airport, Palos Verdes ("It
looks fake!"), a chi-chi restaurant, Mulholland Drive, and Santa Monica Beach.
There's sharply-observed criticism in all of this, softened by the fairy-tale approach. Perhaps
1990 audiences thought it all irrelevant for a Tom Hanks movie, and expected him to solve his
problems by kissing a mermaid or running down a hall in his underwear. Instead we get little
glimpses of distorted reality, like the diminished-perspective Coffee-Corner-Of-Doom, with the
powdered creamer that clots instead of dissolves. This ought to have communicated something to dehumanized
working folks. Maybe they just felt insulted.
The performances of the two-score characters that Joe encounters are also wonderful. They're all
given excellent, unrealistic dialogue. Dan Hedeya, looking exactly like the farmer in the
first animated Animal Farm, is an object lesson of what happens to defeated paper-pushers.
Mr. Graynamore, all bluff and show, pitches his insane offer with the perfect assurance of business
hustlers who use their persuasive talent to entrap people. Abe Vigoda is the native chief who
seems to realize that he's an expendable plot mechanism. A deadpan, "I'll be going now", is
his perfunctory exit line.
But Joe doesn't interact solely with users, losers
and zombies. There's also the dignified goodwill of Marshall (Ossie Davis), a chauffeur who doubles
as a mentor-motivator, helping to prepare Joe for his odyssey, so to speak. My favorite bit of all is
Barry McGovern's marvellously intense luggage salesman, who outfits Joe like Argos getting Jason
ready to go forth and conquer. "That's extremely interesting ... as a luggage problem", he
intones, as if sagely figuring out a crucial chess move. 1
Even the bits are superb. Carol Kane has a one-shot smile as a hairdresser, and Amanda Plummer
(Pulp Fiction) purrs nicely as the first mate on the sailboat. Finally, hiding in plain
sight is Nathan Lane, disguised almost beyond recognition as the Waponis' excitable 'advance man'.
The romantic center is Meg Ryan, in three roles. Each woman Joe meets on his journey is a dead ringer
for the last, but all have serious problems. Poor DeDe is simply terrorized by life - she responds
to Joe's advances but folds up like a withered flower when confronted by the idea of a terminal
sickness. She's too cowed to
handle much of anything outside herself, and Joe lets her go. The Greynamore Sisters are more
challenging, and are seemingly meant to represent polar opposite reactions to an oppressive,
wealthy parent. In a society where just making it on your own is a tough row to hoe, there's a
tendency to never break free from parents. Angelica, the Los Angeles Mercedes-Benz welfare case,
has become the bought dog of her father, and has lost all self-respect. She's caricatured as a
trend-following hollow woman, cracking crablegs and reciting pitiful poetry to snag a pitiful
one-night. DeDe and Angelica fascinate Joe, but neither is the girl for him. Angelica's half-sister
Patricia fits the bill - she's a rebel, and her only frustration is her uneasy relationship with
her father - she hasn't sold out like Angelica, but she's acutely aware that along every handout
comes with strings attached. But she's a player and a fighter, and she's just what Joe needs.
So this brings us to the island of Waponi Wu, where most viewers say they totally tuned out of the
movie. I guess it was the last straw, an artificial stylistic jump they didn't want to make.
To Savant it's perfect. Joe versus the Volcano is about taking responsibility for one's own
life, which means having courage - courage not to be cool, courage not to be affluent. The courage to
accept oneself and face life, instead of studiously avoiding possible
pitfalls. Joe is a lost soul who fancies himself a helpless victim until he's liberated by a fatal
diagnosis. He makes the moves and takes the chances only when he no longer has his compass affixed
to the safe path. He defies the feared 'crooked road' that looms over American Panascope, Waponi Wu
and his own living room, and finds his own adventure. 2
The danger is in selling out, losing one's dignity, losing one's soul. DeDe and Mr. Wa-Waturi are
lost and don't even know it. Angelica
is like an addict: she knows she's wasting her life and is too weak to do anything about it besides
abusing potential mates like Joe, whom she patronizes and dumps on because she no longer has a
grip on her own personality. The chip on Patricia's shoulder is different - she gives Joe a hard
time, unconsciously testing to see if he's going to be another passive Pod, or will
fight back. Ya gotta be a fighter on the personality plane - you can't just passively accept things.
The Waponis may look like over-costumed Gilligan's Island rejects, drinking huge amounts of Jump
Orange Soda, but Savant thinks they're perfect. A melding of 'Polynesian, Celtic, Hebrew and Latin'
influences, they're a society that's sold out entirely. Their fear is the giant volcano Wu, which
instead of being a given (it either kills you or it don't), has become a cultural Moloch that
determines their every move. Sam Greynamore uses the Waponis' fear to exploit them, and having
a population so demoralized that nobody will sacrifice themselves to save the rest, they have to
bargain for an outsider to sacrifice himself for them. As a gambit, it's vaguely similar to
The Wicker Man. The Waponis are so lost,
they're worshipping Gods they no longer believe in - "Joe, even the Chief doesn't want you to jump".
So, refusing to swallow Waturi's line that Life is supposed to be rotten, Joe looks for the end of
his crooked road, only to find his true nature and happiness. It doesn't have to happen
that way - he's indeed lucky. But even as an entire society is wiped out before his eyes, and not
grieved one bit (who mourns people without souls?), Joe hasn't put it all together. He needs a
romantic Other to share life with and keep him straightened out, away from hypochondriac,
Bickle-ish Morbid Self-Attention.
Joe versus the Volcano is of course a Shaggy Dog story, that uses its premise as a hook to
keep us wondering how in the Heck it will resolve in a satisfactory way. Most
Shaggy Dogs end up evading their own premises, or just ending with their issues 'meaningfully'
unresolved, as in The Birds. We say that a movie like
Joe versus the Volcano is 'painting itself into a corner', and, like a Rod Serling twist,
what happens at the windup takes on too much weight.
In the final judgement, the real measure of a film is
whether it connects with an audience or not, and if you take the 1990 rejection as evidence, maybe
Joe versus the Volcano is a failure. I find that the resolution does all the things it
needs to. People remark that the volcano action at the end is silly and unrealistic, when the
picture never tried to be realistic for a moment ... some fantasies you reject and some you embrace.
Perhaps Tom Hanks in 1990 didn't send the right signals to get viewers ready to see something with
this kind of 'heavy whimsy'. Go figure.
Other interpretations abound. One centers on the idea that Joe versus the Volcano is a
child's fairy tale inspired by Joe's juvenile lamp, the one with the 'island paradise' pattern
that becomes a motif. In this Invaders from Mars-like dream logic, the movie is a
stylized picture book because it's being dreamed by a reader of stylized picture books, a kid. That's
why the show is constructed purely of whimsical, irrational things like 'brain clouds' - It's a dream.
And the dream is full of all kinds of wisdom on how to live one's life fully.
I find the philosophy in Joe versus the Volcano really useful ... for seeing the truth of
things,
not necessarily doing the right thing. DVD Savant isn't a life coward, but you sure tend to look
back on those past decisions you were too conventional about, in a different way. 'Don't make your
life decisions out of fear', would seem to be the message that coalesces from John Patrick Shanley's
eccentric fable. Stop denying Death, and go out and live as if you aren't going to be around forever.
Warner's DVD of Joe versus the Volcano has been a long time a' coming, down its own crooked
road. The reputation of this film being what it is, I'm grateful to see it come out at all.
I've played my nicely-letterboxed laserdisc endlessly, but now it will finally be retired. TBS shows
the picture frequently, pan'n scanned into meaningless two-shots. The
colors are much sharper on the DVD, with the sickly greens of the flourescents that 'suck out your soul'
at American Panascope, pulsing like electricity. The restaurant's scarlet hues are stable, and the amusing
illustration-like views of the Volcano at the end are a lot sharper, because of DVD's ability
to handle reds better.
This movie cries for extras, or anything to help place it in context. A chance to learn more about
John Patrick Shanley would be welcome, but the 'cast and crew' production notes link only to more
info on Hanks and Ryan, two personalities who've been done to death in the ensuing decade. I thought their
You've Got Mail was a horrible stinker, a perfect example of a philosophical
opposite to Joe versus the Volcano.
The 'behind the scenes documentary' turns out to be
a woebegone featurette from 1990, where the actors pay lip service to the 'existential' nature of
the film, and then basically give up. Shanley smiles
and answers the final question, 'Who Wins, Joe or the Volcano?', with a meaningless laugh that
indicates total editorial desperation. A music video for the Eric Burdon version of 16 Tons
that opens the film is fairly unimpressive, and the big-faces cover art stinks, "- Like the coffee!
Mr. Wa-waturi!"
According to what I've heard, Joe versus the Volcano's ending was refilmed after bad previews.
The original script was once available online, where you could read the unused original ending, but
it's since disappeared. Savant prefers the final, but the first, which pads out the end unnecessarily
tying up some loose plot ends, has some hilarious jokes - Patrica, rescued with Joe on the deck of
the sister ship Tweedledee, to her father and Dr. Ellison: "That's the
most dastardly thing I've ever heard. You're both Dastards." Now, seeing that alternate
ending would have been a thrill.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,
Joe versus the Volcano rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: featurette, trailer, music video
Packaging: Amaray case
Reviewed: April 6, 2002
Footnotes:
1. It was depressing to see John Cleese as the new Q in The World is
Not Enough, doing silly-ass nothing comedy business that would be too broad for Casino
Royale. Too bad Barry Mcgovern is American - he'd be a terrific Q.
Return
2. The same conflict is humorously described in Albert Brooks' 1991
film, Defending Your Life, which is more bluntly about 'facing your fear!' as the key to
personal advancement in a cosmic system of reincarnation. Joe versus the Volcano is more
related to Brooks' picture than it is to 1993's Groundhog Day, which to Savant seems an
improved, less philosophically leaky It's a Wonderful Life.
Return
3. As proposed in one of the essays on the Joe versus the Volcano
site, the Duck, seen in one brief but pointed shot on Waponi Wu, might represent the Devil, as the
tempter Sam Graynamore's
cane handle bears the image of a duck as well. The implication is that Graynamore hasn't lost his
soul, he's sold it.
Return
DVD Savant Text © Copyright 2002 Glenn Erickson
Go BACK to the Savant Main Page.
Buy: