What is perhaps the defining moment in Alex Cox’s Walker (1987) comes just over half-way through the film, when two employees of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Accessory Transit Company pay a visit to Ed Harris's William Walker, erstwhile American filibuster and President of the Republic of Nicaragua, and inform him that Vanderbilt, Walker’s patron and the instigator of his Nicaraguan project, has not been paying what he owes for his company’s exclusive concession for overland shipping from the Atlantic to the Pacific through Nicaragua and propose starting a new company, which would offer Walker a more favorable deal. Responding with accusations of treason to his lieutenants’ suggestions that, distasteful though this development may be, they owe all their victories—indeed everything they have—to Cornelius Vanderbilt and reminding them that the newly adopted Constitution grants him the power to do as he wishes, Walker declares that he will not only revoke Vanderbilt’s concession, but that he will further commandeer all of his ships, rendering them the property of the Republic of Nicaragua. Moments later, we see him walking along the beach with a member of the American phalange (Walker’s Immortals), with whom he shares the following exchange:
“I cannot help noticing, sir, during the time I’ve spent with you that you’ve betrayed every principle you’ve had, all the men who supported you. May I ask why?”
“No, you may not.”
“I’m still not clear on what exactly are your aims.”
“The ends justify the means.”
“What are the ends?”
“I can’t remember.”
By playing fast and loose with notions of time and history, Alex Cox and Rudy Wurlitzer achieved something approaching the prophetic with Walker. Produced in Nicaragua at the height of the brutal Contra War, Walker was an explicit critique of American involvement in that conflict. But by filling their historical satire on the history of American expansionism and the notion of Manifest Destiny with technological and historical anachronisms—a Newsweek magazine cover featuring a photograph of Walker with the headline “Nicaragua’s Liberator,” a U. S. military helicopter arriving in the burning city of Granada to evacuate all American citizens, a Mercedes sedan speeding past the carriage of the executed Nicaraguan president’s widow—Cox and Wurlitzer were able to emphasize the cyclical nature of history, indicating that flights of cultural elitism and imperialism all share the same characteristics, whatever their historical moment.
Early in the film, shortly after their arrival in Nicaragua, Walker instructs his Immortals that, “as of this moment, we do hereby under God become citizens of Nicaragua.” He continues, “It is our mission to introduce into the family of enlightened and civilized nations a new sister.” To an American viewing this film for the first time in the early years of the twenty-first century, it is difficult not to see shades of George Walker Bush’s messianic crusade—is there any other word for it—to democratize the Middle East. What makes both of these men truly dangerous, rather than simply contemptible, is their respective insistence that they are driven by causes nobler than a desire for wealth or power. This is exemplified in an exchange between Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, upon hearing of Walker’s attempt to colonize the Mexican states of Sonora and Northern Mexico, summons Walker to meet with him.
Vanderbilt: Does Nicaragua mean anything to you, Walker?
Walker: Nothing at all.
Vanderbilt: Nicaragua’s a fucked-up little country somewhere south of here. This worthless piece of real estate controls the overland route to the Pacific. I now control all transportation in Nicaragua. But in order to continue to do so I need stability.
Walker: What’s this got to do with me.
Vanderbilt: What I need is for some man to go down there and take over. I want that country stable. I want it done now. They tell me you’re a clever man, Walker. Doctor, lawyer, surgeon. All that Renaissance rubbish they talk about these days. Well? Can you handle the job?
Walker: That’s not the issue. I plan to get married. Start a newspaper.
Vanderbilt’s Assistant: Then you would be wasting one of life’s golden moments, sir. It is not every man who is offered the chance to have a country of his own.
Walker: Walker’s goals involve a higher purpose than the vulgar pursuit of personal power.
Walker’s reference to himself in the third person here and throughout his occasional voice-over narration to the film provides a window into the messianic madness that drives him. Perhaps the most lucid account of Walker’s character comes from Dona Yrena Corral, who remarks to her husband upon hearing Walker address his Immortals, “Clearly this is no ordinary asshole.” Walker of course ended up accepting Vanderbilt's offer, but only after his fiancée succumbed to a cholera epidemic.
There is also something of a strange amalgamation of Vice President Dick Cheney and Iraqi National Congress head Ahmad Chalabi in Peter Boyle’s corpulent and malevolent Cornelius Vanderbilt. One only need hearken back to the secret energy commission meetings of the early years of the Bush presidency and their recommendations for regime change in Iraq, months before 9/11 and the ensuing hysteria over Iraqi doomsday weapons, to see the Cheney connection. Moreover, we see in Walker’s riding to power in Nicaragua on Vanderbilt’s back only to betray him once he achieves his goals an echo of Chalabi’s role in feeding the CIA the apparently falsified evidence that led us to invade Iraq and his eventual arrest and disgrace after the fall of the Ba’ath regime.
The ironies of the notion of Manifest Destiny and its reliance upon the inherent superiority of civilized cultures over backwards indigenous populations are played to great effect in Walker. After subduing the Nicaraguan conservatives and establishing the American phalange’s control over the country, Walker is offered the presidency of the country. At the advice of his chief lieutenant, Byron Cole, he declines the offer and instead proposes that he head the Nicaraguan military—nominating a Nicaraguan aristocrat, Don Corral, to the presidency. When Walker learns that Corral along with other Nicaraguans are plotting to remove him and his phalange from the country, he has Corral arrested, charged with treason and executed. Shortly after assuming the presidency, Walker's voice-over narrates a scene showing the streets of the Nicaraguan capital. As Walker declares, “Walker’s Immortals initiated various cultural and civic reforms, including the construction of a theater in the traditional European style,” we see the various members of his phalange raping, beating and pillaging the city’s inhabitants.
All of this heavy socio-political commentary could easily become bogged down in its own moralist fervor, were it not for the film’s brilliant humor and dazzling visual cues. Cox’s film is heavily indebted to the westerns of Sergio Leone and especially Sam Peckinpah for its tight close-ups, impressive vistas and its occasional bursts of balletic violence. Moreover, the comic pairings of the members of Walker’s Immortals provide an important counterpoint of levity to the films more serious themes. As one phalange member says to another, “I brought you down here to the Paris, France of Central America and you’re behaving like you’re still in some hamlet in the woods.”
The film's historical cycle is brought full circle in Walker’s speech to the crowd of Nicaraguans gathered around him as the city of Granada is besieged by Vanderbilt’s armed opposition:
“I cannot help noticing, sir, during the time I’ve spent with you that you’ve betrayed every principle you’ve had, all the men who supported you. May I ask why?”
“No, you may not.”
“I’m still not clear on what exactly are your aims.”
“The ends justify the means.”
“What are the ends?”
“I can’t remember.”
By playing fast and loose with notions of time and history, Alex Cox and Rudy Wurlitzer achieved something approaching the prophetic with Walker. Produced in Nicaragua at the height of the brutal Contra War, Walker was an explicit critique of American involvement in that conflict. But by filling their historical satire on the history of American expansionism and the notion of Manifest Destiny with technological and historical anachronisms—a Newsweek magazine cover featuring a photograph of Walker with the headline “Nicaragua’s Liberator,” a U. S. military helicopter arriving in the burning city of Granada to evacuate all American citizens, a Mercedes sedan speeding past the carriage of the executed Nicaraguan president’s widow—Cox and Wurlitzer were able to emphasize the cyclical nature of history, indicating that flights of cultural elitism and imperialism all share the same characteristics, whatever their historical moment.
Early in the film, shortly after their arrival in Nicaragua, Walker instructs his Immortals that, “as of this moment, we do hereby under God become citizens of Nicaragua.” He continues, “It is our mission to introduce into the family of enlightened and civilized nations a new sister.” To an American viewing this film for the first time in the early years of the twenty-first century, it is difficult not to see shades of George Walker Bush’s messianic crusade—is there any other word for it—to democratize the Middle East. What makes both of these men truly dangerous, rather than simply contemptible, is their respective insistence that they are driven by causes nobler than a desire for wealth or power. This is exemplified in an exchange between Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who, upon hearing of Walker’s attempt to colonize the Mexican states of Sonora and Northern Mexico, summons Walker to meet with him.
Vanderbilt: Does Nicaragua mean anything to you, Walker?
Walker: Nothing at all.
Vanderbilt: Nicaragua’s a fucked-up little country somewhere south of here. This worthless piece of real estate controls the overland route to the Pacific. I now control all transportation in Nicaragua. But in order to continue to do so I need stability.
Walker: What’s this got to do with me.
Vanderbilt: What I need is for some man to go down there and take over. I want that country stable. I want it done now. They tell me you’re a clever man, Walker. Doctor, lawyer, surgeon. All that Renaissance rubbish they talk about these days. Well? Can you handle the job?
Walker: That’s not the issue. I plan to get married. Start a newspaper.
Vanderbilt’s Assistant: Then you would be wasting one of life’s golden moments, sir. It is not every man who is offered the chance to have a country of his own.
Walker: Walker’s goals involve a higher purpose than the vulgar pursuit of personal power.
Walker’s reference to himself in the third person here and throughout his occasional voice-over narration to the film provides a window into the messianic madness that drives him. Perhaps the most lucid account of Walker’s character comes from Dona Yrena Corral, who remarks to her husband upon hearing Walker address his Immortals, “Clearly this is no ordinary asshole.” Walker of course ended up accepting Vanderbilt's offer, but only after his fiancée succumbed to a cholera epidemic.
There is also something of a strange amalgamation of Vice President Dick Cheney and Iraqi National Congress head Ahmad Chalabi in Peter Boyle’s corpulent and malevolent Cornelius Vanderbilt. One only need hearken back to the secret energy commission meetings of the early years of the Bush presidency and their recommendations for regime change in Iraq, months before 9/11 and the ensuing hysteria over Iraqi doomsday weapons, to see the Cheney connection. Moreover, we see in Walker’s riding to power in Nicaragua on Vanderbilt’s back only to betray him once he achieves his goals an echo of Chalabi’s role in feeding the CIA the apparently falsified evidence that led us to invade Iraq and his eventual arrest and disgrace after the fall of the Ba’ath regime.
The ironies of the notion of Manifest Destiny and its reliance upon the inherent superiority of civilized cultures over backwards indigenous populations are played to great effect in Walker. After subduing the Nicaraguan conservatives and establishing the American phalange’s control over the country, Walker is offered the presidency of the country. At the advice of his chief lieutenant, Byron Cole, he declines the offer and instead proposes that he head the Nicaraguan military—nominating a Nicaraguan aristocrat, Don Corral, to the presidency. When Walker learns that Corral along with other Nicaraguans are plotting to remove him and his phalange from the country, he has Corral arrested, charged with treason and executed. Shortly after assuming the presidency, Walker's voice-over narrates a scene showing the streets of the Nicaraguan capital. As Walker declares, “Walker’s Immortals initiated various cultural and civic reforms, including the construction of a theater in the traditional European style,” we see the various members of his phalange raping, beating and pillaging the city’s inhabitants.
All of this heavy socio-political commentary could easily become bogged down in its own moralist fervor, were it not for the film’s brilliant humor and dazzling visual cues. Cox’s film is heavily indebted to the westerns of Sergio Leone and especially Sam Peckinpah for its tight close-ups, impressive vistas and its occasional bursts of balletic violence. Moreover, the comic pairings of the members of Walker’s Immortals provide an important counterpoint of levity to the films more serious themes. As one phalange member says to another, “I brought you down here to the Paris, France of Central America and you’re behaving like you’re still in some hamlet in the woods.”
The film's historical cycle is brought full circle in Walker’s speech to the crowd of Nicaraguans gathered around him as the city of Granada is besieged by Vanderbilt’s armed opposition:
“You all might think that there will be a day when America will leave Nicaragua alone. But I am here to tell you, flat out, that that day will never happen, because it is our destiny to be here. It is our destiny to control you people. So no matter how much you fight, no matter what you think, we’ll be back . . . time and time again. From the future, if not the present, we may expect a just judgment.”
5 comments:
Very well written and historically apt! One, two, three, many Nicaraguas as time goes by. Bravo to your second excellent blog.
Great review! I had never heard of this film until this very evening, when I picked up the DVD case at Video Americain, about an hour and a half ago. I almost rented it!
james-
thanks for reading and for the positive comments. this wasn't exactly a difficult connection to make as this was the obvious point of the film in the first place, but what i think makes walker so special, as opposed to the glut of largely gutless films that have been produced about the iraq war, is that it not only makes this broader historical statement, but that it also does it in an original way that does not deny the humor in these sort of tragic adventures.
joe-
thanks for reading. if you end up seeing the film, let me know what you think.
The face of Ed Harris on the dvd case does remind me of gee-dubya.
David,
It is interesting reading a movie review about a topic very sour to many Latin-Americans, for all the incursions, and impositions, done by the United States in their countries. I have read a book that might be familiar to many, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer, which touches this issue. Furthermore, in one of my classes I briefly taught about Ruben Dario, a famous Nicaraguan poet, by many considered the father of the well know literary movement (in this side of the pond) Modernism. The poem I chose to expose the students too is the one that follows, with the introduction:
Rubén Darío (1867-1916): To Roosevelt
________________________________________
Theodore Roosevelt was the individual who most represented the US incursions into Latin America that outraged even nonpolitical poets such as Rubén Darío (Nicaragua, 1867-1916). Latin Americans had admired the energy, wealth, and democracy of the United States, but now they feared the bullying of their northern neighbor. President Roosevelt supported a 1903 revolution in Panama that resulted in the annexation by the U.S. of territory for the Panama Canal, and in 1904 proclaimed a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which justified the use of the U.S. military to "police" Latin America.
________________________________________
It is with the voice of the Bible, or the verse of Walt Whitman,
that I should come to you, Hunter,
primitive and modern, simple and complicated,
with something of Washington and more of Nimrod.
You are the United States,
you are the future invader
of the naive America that has Indian blood,
that still prays to Jesus Christ and still speaks Spanish.
You are the proud and strong exemplar of your race;
you are cultured, you are skillful; you oppose Tolstoy.
And breaking horses, or murdering tigers,
you are an Alexander-Nebuchadnezzar.
(You are a professor of Energy
as today's madmen say.)
You think that life is fire,
that progress is eruption,
that wherever you shoot
you hit the future.
No.
The United States is potent and great.
When you shake there is a deep temblor
that passes through the enormous vertebrae of the Andes.
If you clamor, it is heard like the roaring of a lion.
Hugo already said it to Grant: The stars are yours.
(The Argentine sun, ascending, barely shines,
and the Chilean star rises...) You are rich.
You join the cult of Hercules to the cult of Mammon,
and illuminating the road of easy conquest,
Liberty raises its torch in New York.
But our America, that has had poets
since the ancient times of Netzahualcoyotl,
that has walked in the footprints of great Bacchus
who learned Pan's alphabet at once;
that consulted the stars, that knew Atlantis
whose resounding name comes to us from Plato,
that since the remote times of its life
has lived on light, on fire, on perfume, on love,
America of the great Montezuma, of the Inca,
the fragrant America of Christopher Columbus,
Catholic America, Spanish America,
the America in which noble Cuahtemoc said:
"I'm not in a bed of roses"; that America
that trembles in hurricanes and lives on love,
it lives, you men of Saxon eyes and barbarous soul.
And it dreams. And it loves, and it vibrates, and it is the daughter of the Sun.
Be careful. Viva Spanish America!
There are a thousand cubs loosed from the Spanish lion.
Roosevelt, one would have to be, through God himself,
the-fearful Rifleman and strong Hunter,
to manage to grab us in your iron claws.
And, although you count on everything, you lack one thing: God!
Translated by Bonnie Frederick
Sorry if it took too much space. Cheers!
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