Ghosts and Darkness is an American history adventure film of 1996 directed by Stephen Hopkins and starring Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas. The scenario was written by William Goldman. This story is the fictional story of the Tsavo-Eater Man, two lions of Tsavo who attacked and killed workers in Tsavo, Kenya, during the construction of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in East Africa in 1898.
The film received a critical response after it was released and later won an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing to oversee voice editor Bruce Stambler.
Video The Ghost and the Darkness
Plot
In 1898, Sir Robert Beaumont, the main financier of the railway project in Tsavo, Kenya, was furious that the project was running behind schedule. He sought the skills of Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, a British military engineer, to get the project back on track. Patterson travels from England to Tsavo, telling his wife, Helena, that he will finish the project and will return to London for the birth of their son. He met British supervisor Angus Starling, Kenyor Keny Samuel, and Doctor David Hawthorne. Hawthorne told Patterson about the recent lion attack that had affected the project.
That night, Patterson killed the approaching lion with a single shot, earned the respect of the workers and returned the project on schedule. However, not long after, Mahina, the foreman of the building, was dragged from her tent in the middle of the night. His half-eaten body was found the next morning. Patterson then tried to hunt the lion the second night, but the next morning, another worker was found dead at the edge of the camp from Patterson's position.
Patterson's only comfort now was the letters he received from his wife. Immediately, while the workers collected wood and built a fire pit around the tent, a lion attacked the camp at noon, killing other workers. While Patterson, Starling, and Samuel tracked him down at one end of the camp, another lion jumped on top of them from the roof of the building, killing Starling with a slash down his throat and wounding Patterson. Despite the last attempt to kill them, the two lions fled. Samuel states that there has never been a pair of human eaters; they have always been solitary hunters.
The workers, led by Abdullah, began to ignite Patterson. Work on the bridge stalled. Patterson asked the British army to protect the workers, but was rejected. During a visit to the camp, Beaumont told Patterson that he would damage his reputation if the bridge was not completed on time and that he would contact the famous hunter Charles Remington to help because Patterson could not kill the animals.
Remington arrived with a skilled Maasai warrior to help kill the lion. They call the lions "Ghost" and "Darkness" because of their famous cruel methods of attack. Initial attempts failed when Patterson's loan gun shot out. The soldiers decide to leave, but Remington stays behind. He built a new hospital for sick and wounded workers and teased lions into abandoned buildings with parts of animals and blood. When the lion falls into the trap, Remington and Patterson shoot at them; they escaped and attacked the new hospital, killing many patients and Hawthorne.
Abdullah and the building people left, and only Patterson, Remington, and Samuel were left behind to confront the robbers. Patterson and Remington found an animal's nest, finding a lion's bone. That night, Remington killed one of the couples using Patterson and a baboon as a decoy. The workers celebrate, though later Patterson dreams about his wife and baby boy visiting him at Tsavo, only for them to be killed by the remaining lions before he can reach them.
Awakening from his nightmare the following morning, Patterson discovers that the remaining lion has dragged Remington from his tent and killed him; Patterson and Samuel cremated Remington's body on fire where he died. Due to the sadness and despair to end the massacre, the two men set fire to the tall grass around the camp, drove a living lion to the camp (and the ambush they set there). The lions attacked Patterson and Samuel on a partially constructed bridge and after a long battle, Patterson eventually killed him. Abdullah and the construction workers returned, and the bridge was completed on time.
Maps The Ghost and the Darkness
Cast
Production
The film is based on The Man-Eaters of Tsavo by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson, the man who actually killed the two real lions.
Scenario
William Goldman first heard of the story while traveling in Africa in 1984, and thought it would be a good script. In 1989 he threw the story into Paramount as a cross between Lawrence of Arabia and Jaws, and they assigned him to write a screenplay he presented in 1990.
"My special feeling is that they are evil," Goldman said of the lion. "I believe for nine months, evil came out of the ground in Tsavo."
The script fabricated the Patterson account, introducing a great American game hunter named Charles Remington. The character is based on the great Anglo-Indian game hunter Charles H. Ryall, Inspector of Railway Police. In the original concept, the character was called Redbeard, and Goldman said his goal in the story was to create an impressive character that could be killed by a lion and make Patterson look bolder; Goldman said his ideal casting for the role was Burt Lancaster.
According to Goldman, Kevin Costner expressed interest in playing Patterson, but Paramount wanted to use Tom Cruise who eventually refused. Work on the film slows down until Michael Douglas moves his producing unit with the pair of Steven Reuther, Constellation Films, to Paramount. Douglas reads his manuscript and loves it, calling it "a remarkable thriller about events that really happened." Douglas decides to produce and Stephen Hopkins is hired to direct.
Val Kilmer, who had just made Batman Forever and frequently traveled to Africa later expressed enthusiasm for the script, which allowed the project to be financed.
The Remington section was initially offered to Sean Connery and Anthony Hopkins but both refused; the producers considered asking Galeard Depardieu when Douglas decided to play the role himself. Stephen Hopkins later said he was unhappy with this.
In the initial draft of the script, Remington would initially be a mysterious figure but when Douglas chose to play it, the character's role was expanded and given history. In Goldman's book Lie Did I Tell ?, Screenwriters argue that Douglas's decision destroyed the mystery of characters, making him a "coward" and "loser".
Location
The film was taken primarily in locations at Songimvelo Game Reserve in South Africa, not Kenya, due to the tax laws. Many of the Maasai characters in this film are actually portrayed by South African actors, although the Maasai depicted during the hunt were depicted by real Maasai warriors hired for the film.
Filming
While true human eaters, like all lions of the Tsavo region, the more aggressive and uncivilized varieties used for filming are actually the least aggressive, both for security and aesthetic reasons. The lion of the film is two male lions with a mane. They are brothers named Caesar and Bongo, who are residents of the Bowmanville Zoo in Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada, both also featured in George of the Jungle The film also features three other lions: two from France and one from the United States.
Director Stephen Hopkins later said about taking pictures:
We have snakebites, scorpion bites, flea tick bites, people struck by lightning, floods, heavy rain and lightning storms, hippos chasing people through the water, cars swept into the water, and some crew members' deaths, including two drowned.... Val came to the location under the worst conditions imaginable. She was really exhausted doing Drs. Moreau ; he deals with the unfavorable publicity of the set; she is having a divorce; he hardly had time to play this role before we started; and he's in almost every scene in this movie. But I trained him six or seven days a week for four months under really bad conditions, and he really came. He has a passion for this movie.
Reception
The film won an Academy Award for Best Sound Editing (Bruce Stambler) at the 69th Academy Awards. However, Val Kilmer was nominated for the Razzie Award for the Worst Supporting Actor. Reviews are mixed, with Rotten Tomatoes giving it a 50% rating based on 46 reviews. Roger Ebert said the movie was so bad, "not having the usual charm of being so bad, it's cute" adding it is "an African adventure that makes Tarzan movies look smooth and realistic". Ebert will put the film on his worst movie list in 1997. Instead, the late David R. Ellis made this movie listing at # 8 on his "Top 10 Animal Horror Movies" count, a list he made to promote the release of Shark Night 3D .
Hopkins said in a 1998 interview that the movie was "in a mess... I have not been able to watch it yet."
In India, the film was remade in Telugu as Mrugaraju and released in 2001.
Home release
The Ghost and the Darkness is available as a single disc DVD. There are no special features other than the theater trailer for this movie. The film was released on LaserDisc in 1997 as a one-disc, two-sided release featuring Dolby Digital audio tracks.
Historical accuracy
Although Patterson claims the lion is responsible for up to 135 deaths, a paper reviewed by a definitive associate of man-eating lions and circumstances surrounding this famous event states that only about 28-31 murders can be verified (Kerbis Peterhans & Gnoske, 2001). (This figure does not take into account everyone who might have been killed but not eaten by animals.)
Patterson's 1907 book itself states that "among them (lions) were no less than 28 Indian coolies, in addition to a number of poor indigenous Africans in which no official records were kept" killed. These fewer numbers are confirmed in the definitive paper on the behavior of the human eater and lion Tsavo by Kerbis Peterhans and Gnoske (2001) and soon afterwards in Dr. definitive book. Bruce Patterson The Lions of Tsavo: Exploring Africa's Famous Human Legacy published by McGraw-Hill in 2004. Patterson wrote a book at the Field Museum in Chicago, where the lions were on display. Kerbis Peterhans & amp; Gnoske points out that the greater casualties attributed to the lion resulted from a pamphlet written by Colonel Patterson in 1925, which states "these two savage savages were killed and devoured, under the most terrible circumstances, 135 craftsmen and Indian and African workers employed in the construction of the Uganda Railway. "
The location where the bridge was built is now called the Human Eat Camp. In Tsavo East National Park, Kenya, about 125 kilometers (78 mi) east of Mount Kilimanjaro and 260 kilometers (160 miles) southeast of Nairobi, on the span of the photo, and other data for this location "> 2.993558 Â ° S 38.461458 Â E / -2.993558; 38.461458 .
See also
- Bwana Devil (1952)
- Mrugaraju
- The Man-Eaters of Tsavo, by J. H. Patterson
References
- Notes
- References
- Goldman, William (2000). What Lies I Say? . Bloomsbury. ISBN: 978-0-74754-977-2.
External links
- Chicago Field Museum - Tsavo Lion Exhibit
- Ghosts and Darkness in Internet Movie Database
- Ghosts and Darkness at Rotten Tomatoes
- Ghosts and Darkness in Virtual History
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments