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Treasure Island review
:. Director: Scott King
:. Starring: Lance Baker, Nick Offerman
:. Running Time: 1:26
:. Year: 1999
:. Country: USA
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Winner of the 1999 Sundance Jury Prize, Treasure Island is an innovative and provocative film that cannot leave the spectator indifferent.
First time director Chris King was inspired by a Fifties novel based on the true story of two British agents who during the Second World War duped the Germans with a corpse that they rigged with false plans of invasion. The full-length film, however, is not a spy story. In King's hands, this account is in effect relegated to the background in the interest of denouncing the apparent morality of American society at that time.
Thus Treasure Island attacks taboo subjects for the time like homosexuality, sexual frustrations, and racism towards minorities. These topics are represented in the two principal characters, agents from information intelligence, who are irreproachable in their professional lives and have, at the very least, filthy private lives. Frank (Lance Baker) is polygamous since he can only have sexual intercourse within the framework of marriage while Samuel (Nick Offerman) shares his wife with other men in order to appease his oppressed homosexual inclinations.
The film thus puts in parallel the preparations of the misinformation mission with the characters' course on an internal quest of the discovery and acceptance of oneself. In order to do this, the film calls upon the deceased to be the catalyst that brings to light their true personalities. Indeed the corpse who comes to haunt them seems to be an incarnation of their conscience that confronts them with their true natures and pushes them to liberate themselves.
With the aim of realism, Treasure Island is shot in black and white and in the style of the period. While the film has a certain naivete and charm of yesteryear, a quite contemporary provocation comes to smash the apparent morality of the time through scenes at the limit of pornography as well as abundant male nudity. The director's intention is to shock in order to bring out the perversion of the time. A hypocritical sexual perversion which contrasts all the more with racism towards racial minorities (Blacks and Asians) or sexual ones (homosexuals). The actors, all unknowns, are obviously not shy in difficult and repugnant roles. The director, who brought a personal touch to all of his characters, manages to parsimoniously strike a balance between the historical context, quirky humor and provocation.
Though Treasure Island is far from being an federalist film, it is nonetheless a major work symbolic of innovative cinema.
Fred Thom
 Reviews of Cult Movies since 2012
Cult Films: 1998 - 2011 Reviews
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