Proteus [2003]

Customer Reviews:

Proteus.......2008-02-13

This is the wost movie I have ever seen!! Two hours of my life I will never get back! Poor acting, bad directing, horrible script!! It was meant to be 1725 yet there was a 1976 Toyota Landcruiser, they had plastic bags and a portable radio. Often the subtitles switch from english to dutch and you have no idea what they are saying. Just stupid! Plant a tree, eat your own vomit do anything just dont watch this movie!!

Surreal or real?.......2006-01-04

A fascinating study of contemporary life - period setting but still contemporary. A thought provoking use of the medium to confront the very real prejudice which follows not just gay/bi men but also 'people of colour' and/or inter-racial relationships.

Have left writing this review for some weeks after seeking the DVD and have decided that yes, it is good, in places very good - and is well worth a view.

Leave YOUR prejudices at the door please.

"I don't know what we are!".......2005-03-31

Proteus is such a sad, emotionally wrought story; it's just a pity that John Greyson of Canada and Jack Lewis of South Africa couldn't have made a better movie of it. Shot on digital video, with what was obviously a limited budget, Proteus is sort of interesting to watch as an example of filmic experimentalism, but nothing can belie the fact that it looks cheaply made and hokey. The end result is a pretentious and affected gay art house schlock that is half-dressed up as a kind psuedo-period doco-drama.

Proteus takes its title from the shape-shifting sea god of Greek mythology and its plot from the records of a 1735 sodomy trial, which involved two prisoners held on Robben Island off the coast of South Africa. They were a Dutch sailor (Neil Sandilands) and Claas Blank, a Hottentot tribesman (Rouxnet Brown). Both meet when they are sentenced to hard labor on the island: the native African for a conviction related to cattle theft, the sailor for sodomy.

After spending time endlessly chipping at rocks, they are soon conscripted to assist Niven (a very good Shaun Smyth), a Dutch botanist who is classifying the native flora. Niven is also gay and has fled Amsterdam, where homosexuals are currently being persecuted and publicly garroted. The seaman and the African embark on a hot sexual affair that eventually leads to a powerful bond neither are capable of articulating; they just don't know what it is. The botanist, meanwhile, after spying on the couple's most intimate moments, begins to harbor a fascination for the African prisoner.

The couple manages to spend many years together, despite threats and taunts from their fellow prisoners to turn them in. But pressure from Amsterdam to crack down on "unnatural practices" by maintaining the social order in the colonies and preserving the mercilessly strict maintenance of class, race and gender hierarchies, leads to the pair being set-up. Discovered in the act, the couple are tortured, chained, placed in prison, and then put on trial again for their "mutual perpetration."

Fusing gender politics, romantic love, and imperialist repression, Proteus tries hard to engage the viewer, and there's no doubt that the movie is packed with a solemn sincerity. But all too often the story comes across as convoluted and long-winded; there are elaborate flashback scenes in Amsterdam, subtitled dialogue in three languages, and many unwarranted anachronisms, such as a jeep, a radio, and a trio of sixties female court reporters, that overload the film. With so much muddle, the emotions lose meaning and the politics go fuzzy with them.

Proteus doesn't really work as a love story because the two main leads, while trying hard, don't have a lot of chemistry and their scenes together are clumsily enacted. The movie also doesn't really work as a political statement because it's trying to cover too much ground. Is it about the horrors of colonialism, or a testimonial on racism, subjugation and homophobia? It's probably about all of these issues but none of them are adequately explored in any detail. And the film fails as a period piece because the insertion of the contemporary props gives it an ill-conceived, conceited post-modern sensibility that just doesn't quite work. Proteus comes across as too overly precious and arty, when in reality, it needed to be much more hard-hitting and powerful than I actually is. Mike Leonard March 05.

Average customer rating:

Disapointing!

Proteus [2003] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Shaun Smyth , Kristen Thomson , Rouxnet Brown , and Neil Sandilands
Director: John Greyson , and Jack Lewis
Manufacturer: Strand Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

All Drama | Drama | Categories | DVD | Video
All Gay & Lesbian | Gay & Lesbian | Categories | DVD | Video
Region 1 | Special Features | DVD | Video
DVD | Format (binding_browse-bin) | Refinements | DVD | Video
ASIN: B0006B9784
Release Date: 2004-12-07

Customer Reviews:

Disapointing!.......2005-11-13

Not worth seeing. The setting of the film mixing elements of South Africa two centuries ago and of the 60's in a same frame of time was interesting but the rest of the movie is insipide.

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