On Tuesday night some of my friends and I gathered to watch Cutthroat Island, a 1995 pirate film that won a place in the Guiness Book of World Records*
My friend recommended it because it has one of the most highly-acclaimed soundtrack scores in film history.
Watching the film itself was an experience like none other. I would love to meet the writers and ask them a few questions about how they came up with the plot and characters. I’m sure it would be a very enlightening conversation.
For those of you who haven’t seen this film, the plot has a major twist (just one): The main pirate is a woman.
Isn’t that clever?
Now, don’t worry, the filmmakers don’t actually explore too many angles for this situation. They know better than to bog down a straightforward plot by making the main character have to use feminine wit or a brains-over-brawn approach for the rest of the characters, who are all male.
Nope, the filmmakers respected their agenda too much to do anything like that. So besides the times where Morgan uses her femininity for, um, provocative purposes, she acts just like a man. She thinks like a man, drinks like a man, punches pirates in the face like a man, etc. Now that’s attractive!
Some people might find it hard to find anything likeable about Lady Pirate Morgan. I’m not sure why. She has a clear and simple goal (get this—she wants to find treasure) and doesn’t let other aspirations or motivations mix in with that. She has a way of using people to get what she wants, which I find kind of endearing. I think the most compelling reason to root for her, though, is because when she is finding treasure or fighting battles or whatever, she has really nice hair.
She’s also indestructible. She survives falling out of a crow’s nest and still wins the duel. She falls a hundred feet onto a rocky shore and sustains only an injury to her eyebrow. As the ever-eloquent Matthew Modine character observes, “You are much more active than other women I’ve met!” (Don’t worry, that line made just about as much sense in context.)
Oh, there is so much to learn from this film. You learn about good military tactics. For example, if you are on a ship in port and you see a pirate fleeing along the dock, it’s good practice to fire all of your canons toward her, right at the city. The civilians can just get out of the way.
We also learn that when solid cannonballs hit stone buildings, they cause great fiery explosions.
And even though an explosion blows a ship to smithereens, treasure boxes will remain intact as they sink to the bottom of the sea. Two pirates, one of whom has just fallen from a crow’s nest, can easily swim to the bottom of the ocean and pull all the treasure back up.
Easy to see why this movie won an award, huh? I admit I may have missed some finer points of the plot with all of the derisive laughter and snide remarks that were for some reason were going on all around the room. Some of the less appreciative among us were hoping that one of the impossible falls would actually kill the main characters so that the producers would be forced to end the movie early.
Not sure why. After all, Cutthroat Island features such a strong, sympathetic and just plain likeable character, with great acting skills. Of course I am referring to my favorite character of the film—King Charles the monkey.
* from the Wikipedia article: “The movie is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of all time.”
But the soundtrack is still good.
