Papillon (1973)

2014 has been a year in which I haven’t watched as many older movies as I usually do. The cause for this is partly because there were so much new movies I wanted to see, but also because I hadn’t set myself a goal to work through specific movie lists, like the IMDB top 250 I did before. When doing it, it meant I got to discover a high number of movie classics. This was supposedly also one, which had been wanting to see, but never got around to (even though I’ve had the DVD for several years). So I finally decided to free up 151 minutes to watch it.

This movie is based on the book Papillon, written by Henri Charrière, who has been convicted for murder and is sent to French Guinea to serve his sentence. In this movie we see how he, as played by Steve McQueen, travels by boat from France. On it he meets Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), who he protects in order to have money to plan an escape. The two get to know each other and slowly a friendship forms. Life in the prisoncamp is tough and Charrière has to face the staff various times when he is not living according to the rules.

Papillon is a long movie, but I thought it was an interesting study of man’s determination to reach a specific goal. Charrière only wants one thing, which is to escape even if the punishment is severe. It’s the friendship with Dega which pulls him through the difficult times. It is not a movie everyone will enjoy, but personally I cared for its characters which were nicely portrayed by Hoffman and McQueen (although you never get the idea he’s French). Was happy to finally have seen this movie and can take it of my to watch stack and add it to the rest of my collection.