Of the reviews I have read so far, the most common criticisms levelled at The Rum Diary are: it’s not funny enough, it’s a bit dull, there isn’t a plot, it’s too long.
The mistake is to go into this film expecting Fear and Loathing in Puerto Rico. The trailer doesn’t help the matter by presenting, in order, the only drink/drug/sex related scenes that do exist, which isn’t many. Unlike Hunter S. Thompson’s later rides, this is not particularly ‘crazy’ and it’s not jam-packed with his trademark acerbic irreverence either.
This is because The Rum Diary was written when Thompson was 22. Full of ambition and idealism, he was struggling to find the unique voice that experience would later bestow. The explosion of impressionist fact/fiction ramblings known as Gonzo Journalism was still some ten years down the line. The dilemma Thompson faced at this time is summed up by a line that appears early on: “I don’t know how to write like me yet”. That’s the point I think many critics are missing.
Like Kerouac before him, Hunter S. Thompson documented his cross-country wanderings using a series of thinly veiled characters as his own alter ego. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, this was Raoul Duke – a disillusioned madman on a non-stop gorge of hallucinogenic mayhem. In The Rum Diary, he is cast as a somewhat naïve journalist, Paul Kemp, newly employed by the editor of a decaying newspaper in Puerto Rico. While he has the penchant for trouble common to all of Thompson’s monikers, Kemp is young and lucid. He is not yet as purposeful and self-assured as Raoul Duke and, as such, doesn’t yet know where to channel his curiosity. The film sees him courted by greedy businessman, falling in love with one of their fiancés, and generally getting embroiled in various rum-fuelled distractions with his newspaper colleagues. Laced into the journey is a creeping epiphany about the injustice and greed of business politics which helps Kemp realise who ‘the bastards’ are and how to use his typewriter to bring them down.
Depp as Paul Kemp - 2011
Terry Gilliam was the perfect director to render Fear and Loathing for the screen, his magical realism sensibility colliding wonderfully with Thompson’s truth-bending LSD road trip. And Bruce Robinson is similarly apposite a choice to bring Thompson’s work into the realm of cinema. His 1986 film Withnail and I is one of the best ever made, deftly bringing to life the discordant friendship between an alcoholic actor and a panicky writer, both poverty-stricken and – more importantly – both outsiders, rejected by a society they despise and adore in equal measure. Depp screened Withnail for Thompson before his death and Thompson liked it. After 19 years away from the director’s chair, Robinson has made a solid return to it. As with Withnail, the directing itself isn’t especially visionary, it just tells the story well, allowing the screenplay (which he also wrote) to shine.
I haven’t read the book, but – even if The Rum Diary was simply an imagined biography of Thompson’s early life – the film does a good job of conjuring how a pre-Gonzo Thompson would behave. The clipped mumblings of half-imagined observation that those familiar with him will recognise seep through less than 3 times throughout the film, giving the sense that his unique style is still gestating. The first time it happens is particularly striking – half an hour must have passed when finally it appears, as a non-diegetic narration over a sequence of shots showing tourists bowling. His contempt for their sheltered experience of the island is obvious. It also contains one of the rare moments of extended reality in the film, a bowling ball hurtling towards a triangle of rum bottles and smashing through in slow motion.
Depp as Raoul Duke - 1998
Johnny Depp gives as faithful a performance as he did in Fear and Loathing, perfectly toning down the eccentricity of middle-aged Thompson to the more tentative younger man. Like many, I discovered Depp in my teens, finding some sort of redemption in his portrayal of bold misfits. While taking so much from these characters at the time, it is easy to look back on the exaggerated gestures of Jack Sparrow and Willy Wonka and dismiss him as a man who pulls silly faces for children. It shouldn’t be easy because he is a brilliant actor. I think my doubts were based on his performances in Alice in Wonderland and The Tourist – two recent roles in which he didn’t deliver. The Rum Diary re-convinced me of his skill and subtlety.
For all my defending of the film, of course there are flaws. Most have mentioned the length issue, which is fair enough – it is indeed half an hour too long. And no, it doesn’t live up to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. But that film documents notorious Thompson, the Gonzo wrecking-ball of truth and illusion, the champion of chaos and liberty. The Rum Diary charts the unremarkable early years of a soon-to-be literary genius, which can never be as captivating as the era of the genius in bloom. The thing is, Robinson and Depp don’t try to make Fear and Loathing in Puerto Rico. What they have made is a solid document of the seeds of Gonzo Journalism, perhaps of most interest to those who already know and admire the Raoul Duke that Paul Kemp would eventually become.
Jon Bates Writes 