![]() I think it can be an easy last resort of a scoundrel when something goes terribly wrong on a film to say, “it’s meant to be Brechtian” or “it’s meant to be surreal” but there were both surreal and Brechtian elements in the original plan and as filming continued the dual casting was something I was constantly thinking about and reshaped the film a great deal. ![]() It works too I think as this central wrongness throughout the entire film is so barefaced but never commented on. It played into ideas I was working with anyway and several people said they got a lot out of it, some entirely new and unexpected things that I thought fitted perfectly with what I’d originally planned on making. I thought potentially of using the footage in a completely different way but then liked the idea of just continuing as if nothing had changed. I was left with half a films worth of footage and spent a while both thinking and investigating. Even if he is played by Lieutenant Dunbar.MC: We’ve touched upon the casting a couple of times now and your description of the double casting being an ‘escape route’ and the Lindsay Anderson-style lead ‘disappearing’ over the six years since work on the film commenced, so the quirk of casting more than one actor for each character was born of necessity yes?įD: The dual role for the lead was a necessity after the disappearance, yes. It leaves the impression of a great setting in search of a workable plot, something that is just not covered by a Messianic postman. In one superb visual snap, Costner encounters a community who swing about in cable cars from the Hoover Dam (run for no discernable reason by a sage played by rock dude Tom Petty). Stephen Windon’s sweeping cinematography also gives it an evocative cast, a telling idea of what America might be reduced to if unshackled from government. ![]() Sticking to what he knows best, he just plays it as a gassy Western, and in isolated jabs musters some stirring horse opera. What are to make of this? Has the world gone so mad it has been taken over by non-indigenous predators? Had he escaped from a now defunct zoo? That the beast never figures, is just indicative of the wispiness of Costner’s intentions. As an example of the film’s entire lack of definition, in one curious and utterly pointless scene a lion is spotted alone on the salt plains. But even the most gaga-Costner fanatic, or Brin reader, will have trouble figuring out the resulting fusion of Mad Max’s roving post-apocalyptic violence, murky religious sentiment (chief baddie Will Patton is named General Bethlehem), loose picaresque structure (Costner’s enigmatic Postman drifts about on horseback having random encounters), and the dubiously divine virtues of getting the post (communication as the soul of civilisation, or something). You’ve got to look hard, mind.Ĭostner was also directing for the second-time, and given his first go was the glorious Dances With Wolves, there were good reasons to be optimistic David Brin’s novel, on which the film is based, was also held high regard amongst knowing geeks. ![]() And yet, despite its, frankly, punishing length (it could lose an hour without anyone noticing what had been lost) this is not without its moments. ![]() For most Americans, after a spate of killing sprees by disillusioned mail-workers, “going postal” was at best a term of derision, at worst psychopathic breakdown. Vilified, especially on the back of the similarly themed Waterworld, as a piece of tedious sci-fi junk, Kevin Costner’s post-apocalyptic odyssey is in truth a Western, but at three hours it tried everyone’s patience, and was held as laughable in its notion of a heroic postman. ![]()
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