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Movie Reviews
Women in Prison
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Midnight Express (1978) |
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| Busted! |
I'm guessing this movie played differently back in the 1970s than it does now. Midnight Express is the story of Billy Hayes (Brad Davis), a young American imprisoned in Turkey on drug charges. He suffers from the brutality of the Turkish penal system -- where he is beaten and raped (this is implied rather than shown) -- and the inconsistency of the Turkish legal system -- which changes his four year sentence into a life term to "make an example" of him. Yet he manages to persevere. In the end, his will is strong enough to overcome the horrors around him, and he manages to escape to freedom. Midnight Express is a rousing story of the resilience of the human spirit.... At least, that is what the filmmakers would like us to believe.
It is possible to spin another narrative: Billy is a spoiled brat. He tries to smuggle two kilos (!) of hash out of Turkey. He is caught by the police at the airport. Although he tries to escape police custody, the Turkish legal systems initially treats him leniently, sentencing him to four years in prison for possession. Unfortunately for Billy, this sentence is later overturned by a higher court that rules that his crime is actually trafficking -- something Billy himself admits to; when his father asks him why he did it, Billy says it was for "the money." At his new sentencing hearing, Billy goes off on a racist rant that culminates with him screaming at the presiding judges:
"For a nation of pigs, it sure seems funny that you don't eat them! Jesus Christ forgave the bastards, but I can't! I hate! I hate you! I hate your nation! And I hate your people! And I fuck your sons and daughters because they're pigs! You're all pigs!"
I especially like the fucking the sons and daughters part. Classy. While in prison, Billy tries unsuccessfully to escape. Later he tries to bribe a guard, and when that backfires, Billy kills him and finally does escape. Oh yeah, he also bites off the tongue of a prison trustee. He further endears himself to the audience in a scene when his girlfriend visits. He hasn't seen her in several years, and the first thing he asks her is to open her blouse so he can jerk off to the sight of her bare breasts. Nice.
Which assessment is closer to the truth? Obviously it is something in between, although I think the latter narrative is certainly more accurate.
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| Tighty whities? Check. Two keys of hash taped to torso? Check. Common sense? Um no. |
Billy considers himself a victim throughout. But he goes into this with his eyes wide open. He carefully cuts the hash into smaller packets, wraps it in tin foil, and tapes all two kilos to his torso. He hides all these preparations from his girlfriend, Susan. He obviously knows what he is doing is illegal, since he is so nervous that he breaks into a cold sweat at the airport. All of this makes his later whining about the arbitrariness of the law a little hard to take. It isn't like he gets caught on a technicality. Billy sets out to deliberately break the law and he gets caught. If you do the crime you consent to the time.
He is brought back to the police office, and in a nightmarish scene is strip searched. Director Alan Parker and screenwriter Oliver Stone do a great job putting us in Billy's corner. He's scared. The camera swirls around the room. The Turkish police are dirty and crude. They makes jokes at Billy's expense, their voices harsh and coarse and literally incomprehensible in Turkish. We are almost never given subtitles or a translator. Obviously, the idea is to make us feel Billy's bewilderment. And yet I found myself wondering what the Turkish police were saying, and I started to feel like the failure to provide translation was just a cheap ploy to make Billy more sympathetic. What is the message ultimately? That the Turkish police are bad because they didn't go out of their way to make Billy more comfortable?
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| Recaptured... and by an American. |
After a while, a shadowy American arrives (Bo Hopkins). Billy asks him if he works for the consulate, and he replies, "something like that." Is he supposed to be CIA? If so, why is he involved? Or is he just some random American working with the Turkish police? In any case, he translates for Billy. The police ask where Billy bought the hash. Billy, brave soul that he is, immediately rolls over and accuses a cab driver and offers to help the police track him down. So far, Billy is a drug trafficker and a snitch. He goes with the police to a local market. Luckily the cab driver is there. Billy points him out, and while the police go to arrest the cabbie, Billy makes a run for it. With no passport and no money, it isn't clear what he intends to do even if he temporarily eludes the police, but he doesn't need to worry about that. Billy knocks things over at the most inopportune moments and gets cornered in a building. Ultimately, though, it isn't the police who recapture him, but the mysterious American. This kicks off the theme that in addition to being mistreated by the Turks, Billy is betrayed by his own government. This is typical 1970s fare, of course, but again, it is hard to see how Billy is being wronged here. Why is he morally right to try to escape? Why should our sympathies be with him? Because he speaks English and the Turks don't? Because he's light skinned, and they're darker? It isn't like Billy was unjustly framed, so I have to admit I'm not sure why I should be rooting for him to escape police custody at this point.
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| Welcome to a Turkish prison. Hamidou demonstrates his championship cricket stroke on Billy's feet. |
Recaptured, he is sent to prison. He arrives at night, and is thrown in a cold cell. He asks for a blanket, the guard tells him it is too late and that they'll deal with it in the morning. As Billy stands shivering in his cell, he hears a voice. One of the other prisoners tells him his cell is unlocked. Billy pushes the door open and steps out into the hall. He reaches into a storeroom, takes a blanket for himself and the other prisoner and returns to his cell. Later that night, the guards come for him. It isn't clear whether the guards' visit is in response to him snagging the blankets or is just part of the usual "welcome" ritual. Either way, Billy is dragged down into a cellar and brutally beaten. Here we meet the head guard, the sadistic Hamidou (Paul Smith), who beats Billy with a club, and then hangs him upside-down and beats the soles of his feet. The scene ends with Hamidou pushing Billy's legs apart and stepping between them, but rape is merely implied here, and Billy never mentions it so we can't be sure what happens.
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| Jimmy (left) and Erich (right) introduce Billy to the prison scene... |
Billy ends up in the prison infirmary. When he wakes up after days of delirium, he meets a group of Westerners who end up being his companions during the long years ahead. They include crazy American Jimmy Booth (Randy Quaid), quiet Swede Erich (Norbert Weisser), and a seedy, drug-addled Englishman, Max (John Hurt). The three move him back into their compound within the prison, with trustee Rifki (Paolo Bonacelli). Apparently the prisoners have a great deal of discretion about where they sleep. No one seems to be locked down at any time. Billy's new friends show him the ropes. The Westerners survive by buying favors from the imprisoned Turks, most notably Rifki. But it is an uneasy relationship. The Turkish inmates cheat and steal from the Westerner at every turn, and Billy is warned not to trust any of them. We also get a bizarre riff on homosexuality. Billy narrates that although homosexuality is illegal in Turkey, Turks engage in it whenever they can. The tone is reminiscent of imperial British propaganda about the immoral and dissolute "Oriental" personality. Again, this may have played differently in 1978 when the movie came out, but setting up homosexuality as essentially a moral deficiency, a sign of degeneration, is disturbing.
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| ... which sort of seems like a male-only, run-down, bazaar. |
Max recommends a lawyer who has some "connections" who can exploit the Turkish legal system's supposed corruption. The lawyer, Yesil (Franco Diogene) meets with Billy, his father, and a representative of the U.S. consulate. The mysterious blond man is never mentioned again. Yesil makes optimistic noises, and the movie hints that he takes a great deal of money from the Hayes family to spread around. But in the end, the trial goes pretty much by the numbers and Billy gets four years in prison. Billy, of course, moans and groans, but the lawyer tells both him and his dad that this is about the best outcome they could expect. After all, Billy was caught red-handed with two keys of hash. Billy's father is pretty broken up over the whole thing, but he has a strange farewell scene with Billy where he basically gives him a care package and says, "well, see you in four years." I'm not sure if the scene feels right or wrong.
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| Rifki's is played solely as antagonist, but his story would probably have been pretty interesting too. |
In prison, the main conflict is with Rifki. The inmates complain that he is cheating them, and one of Billy's particular accusations is that Rifki charges them for good tea, but only makes weak tea instead. Realizing that this is unlikely to bring much audience empathy, the filmmakers pull out of all the stops. Max has a little cat that he plays with in several early scenes. Wanna guess what happens to the cat? You know, you'd think that being in a Turkish prison would provide plenty of ammo for filmmakers hoping to create a sympathetic character out of Billy without having to take recourse to such shameless manipulation.
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| Um, why exactly does Erich need to be washing Billy's hair? |
Another plot development: reckless Jimmy wants to try to escape. Billy refuses to go along, preferring to serve out his sentence. Jimmy tries on his own and is captured and beaten so badly he ends up in a hospital in the city. While Jimmy is away, Billy and Erich develop a special relationship. They bathe each other, meditate together, and -- in a particularly weird scene -- strip down to their underwear, cover themselves with oil, and go through a Pilates routine. Needless to say, Erich gets the wrong idea and puts the moves on Billy in the shower. Billy responds at first, but then suddenly puts an end to things, pushing Erich away and shaking his head softly. See, Billy is strong. He doesn't allow himself to give in to degenerate temptation. Foreigner Erich is weak. Frankly, Billy strikes me as a bit of a tease here, but more annoying is that at the end you realize that the whole point of the sequence was to build up to Billy's "strong willed" decision to push Erich away.
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| Now, I admit, I'm not a lawyer, and furthermore, I am not familiar with Turkish customs or legal procedures... but I'm guessing that calling the judges "pigs" and threatening to sodomize their sons is not a good way to convince the court to set you free. |
Now comes the crucial scene that pushes the movies into its final act. When Billy is a mere 53 days from the end of his sentence, the American consul arrives to inform him that the high court in Ankara has rejected his sentence and ordered a new trial. The consul hints darkly at political maneuverings behind the scenes. Once back in court, Billy makes his racist speech. The judge, surprisingly regretful despite Billy's outburst, says that his "hands are tied" and sentences Billy to 30 years in prison. Now, a few points here. On a human level we feel for Billy. He is just a kid who made a mistake, and now after surviving four years in a brutal prison, he gets another 26 tacked on. So even though Billy reveals himself to be a thoroughly unpleasant person here, we feel bad for him. That said, the new sentence is undoubtedly correct. Billy was trafficking, not just guilty of possession. The main beef Billy has with the Turkish legal system is that it worked so slowly that it gave him a false hope of early release, not its fundamental unfairness. Indeed, one of Billy's main beefs is that the system isn't corrupt enough. Try as they might, he and his parents can't buy his freedom. In addition to calling all Turks "pigs," Billy also attacks the legitimacy of law in general. He makes an anarchist argument that all laws are illegitimate because they are made by government and change over time. Um, yeah, so what? I mean, Billy isn't being charged ex post facto. He went to a foreign country and knowingly broke the law. And now, despite his attempts at bribery, he is being sentenced for his crime. So yeah, on a human level it is a sad story, but if you stop to think about it, it is hard to get too worked up. Now, just to clarify, this movie is based on a true story. I don't know the details of the Billy Hayes case in real life. I'm only talking about what is on the screen. The problem with the movie is that instead of accepting that Billy is wrong, and seeing his plight as a human tragedy, the movie seeks to make him an innocent martyr. And to that I say: No Dice.
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| Jimmy, Max, and Billy plot to escape. |
Back in prison, Billy now decides to try to escape. Jimmy is back inside with them, and he manages to get an architect's drawing of the prison. The whole place is built on top of ancient Christian catacombs. Billy and Jimmy manage to hack through a wall into shaft that leads below the prison. The first night the go into the shaft, they run into a dead end. So they return to their rooms. This goes on a couple of nights, but finally Rifki discovers the opening to the shaft. Hamidou arrives and takes Jimmy away, assuming he's guilty.
Max and Billy are irate at Rifki for blowing their escape, so they decide to take revenge by stealing all of the money Rifki worked so hard to accumulate in prison. Not only do they take it, but they burn it, making sure the residue is around for Rifki to find later. Rifki is heartbroken, and when he sees Max snickering at him, he decides to get his own revenge. Rifki and Hamidou play a little charade where Hamidou discovers a stash of hash on Rifki. Rifki then obligingly rats out Max for punishment. Hamidou crushes Max's much needed glasses, and hauls him away as Billy screams that Rifki is lying.
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| Billy bites off and spits out Rifki's tongue. Intense filmmaking? Or just over the top? |
Now comes Billy's revenge. As the guards walks away, Billy attacks Rifki. He beats him to within an inch of his life. Then he bends down toward the prone Rifki. It looks like he is kissing him, but then he pulls back, and in a slo-mo shot spits out Rifki's tongue that he's bitten off. Ewww.
Showing that the Turkish penal system isn't quite as inscrutable as the filmmakers would have us believe, Billy gets shipped off to "section 13," the mental ward. Surrounded by insane convicts, Billy slowly loses touch with reality. He meets a Harvard educated rapist named Ahmet (Peter Jeffrey). Ahmet is mad, and has come to accept his madness. He tries to convince Billy that he too is a "bad machine." In a way, Billy accepts this, and he becomes one of the slack-jawed, vacant-eyed, nuts. This all changes one day when Billy's girlfriend, Susan (Irene Miracle), comes to visit.
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| "Hi Susan. Long time, no see. You don't mind if I play with Mr. Happy, do you?" |
Susan and Billy meet in a tin shack and remain separated by a glass partition. Billy has been reduced to a babbling mess. Susan tries to give him an update about his family, but Billy just stares at her chest instead. Finally, he grunts at her to open her blouse. She wants to refuse, but he is so desperate that she gives in and shows him her bare breasts as he strokes himself. She even presses her boobs against the glass while he takes care of business. With Billy still babbling, she shows him an photo album she's brought, complete with a special gift from "Mr. Franklin... from the bank." Billy barely seems to get it. Susan urges him to be strong. He sort of grunts his understanding. I know he's been through a lot, but again, it is hard to get in Billy's corner in this scene either.
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| Impaled on a coat hook, Hamidou is much less intimidating. |
Back in the prison, Billy tears open the back of the book and finds a big wad of hundred dollar bills in the lining. Naively, he tries to bride Hamidou, who pockets the money and then drags him off to the torture chamber for punishment. Hamidou begins to beat Billy, and with Billy crouching in a corner starts to undo his pant. Just at that moment, Billy springs forward and shoves Hamidou backward. Hamidou crashes against a blunt-tipped coat hook that unconvincingly jams into his brain killing him instantly. Billy grabs Hamidou's gun and thinks about putting a bullet into him for revenge. But in the end, Billy's wits return just in time. He steals a uniform, and walks out the side door of the prison. Over a montage of pictures of him reunited with his family, we learn that Billy crossed the border into Greece and arrived back in New York three weeks later.
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| Not quite riding off into the sunset, but still a happy ending for a would-be hash dealer. Heart warming, isn't it? |
Though racist and naive at times, this movie actually is quite good. It is hard to really like Billy, and yet it is hard to not be moved by his plight. In the end, he's a kid who screwed up once and got a hellish punishment in return. Ultimately, the main problem is that the filmmakers try to make Billy more sympathetic than he really is. If they had focused on Billy as a tragic figure rather than an innocent martyr, it would all have hung together much better. Oliver Stone's screenplay hints both at his ability to tell a story and as his lack of political sophistication. Stone is a guy who feels rather than thinks, and his work is without exception more viscerally compelling than thought-provoking. In any case, Midnight Express is a classic prison movie, and definitely worth a look... unless you're of Turkish descent and would rather not be offended.
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