Midnight Express (1978)

A nominee for Best Picture of 1978, Midnight Express depicts the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of an American for attempting to smuggle drugs out of Turkey in 1970. Based upon a true story--but apparently taking considerable liberties with it, according to those directly involved--this film's screenplay won Oliver Stone his first Oscar (before he started directing films as well as writing them). What is admirable about the film is that it fully admits to the guilt of its lead character, Billy Hayes. He's shown in the opening sequence taping the drugs (hashish, if you are curious) to his body, so his guilt is never in doubt. What Midnight Express grapples with instead is the extent to which someone should be punished for such an offense. Its focus is on what should be an appropriate sentence for the crime that Hayes has committed.

Brad Davis plays Hayes, the American who spends several years in prison in Istanbul for his crime. While behind bars, he befriends a group of people who also share his outsider status in Turkey: Jimmy, another American, played a young and slim Randy Quaid; Max, an Englishman, played brilliantly by the incomparable John Hurt; and Erich, a Swede, played by Norbert Weisser. Hayes makes enemies in prison as well, including Rifki (Paolo Bonicello), who takes advantage of the prisoners and rats them out when he gets information on them. Chief among his enemies, though, is the head guard, Hamidou (played by Paul L. Smith), whose mindless brutality is depicted again and again throughout the film.

If Turkish prisons had not already enjoyed a reputation for their deplorable conditions and the mistreatment of prisoners, this film would certainly have given them one. As it is, you get to witness numerous scenes of torture and sadism on the part of the guards and even some of the fellow prisoners. It's quite uncomfortable to watch at times, and I won't describe any of the more intense scenes here. And the country of Turkey does not come off any better in the courtroom scenes either, given the seeming ease with which sentences can be changed (lengthened, in particular) based upon the constant nagging of a prosecutor. The film is pretty heavily stacked against a fair depiction of the country in which it is set, but I suppose to make the point about the conditions in the prison system more forcefully, the filmmakers felt the need to concentrate primarily upon those moments of the most intense pain and injustice.

This film does have much to admire about it. I thought the choice to use Turkish dialogue throughout the movie was especially effective. The filmmakers provide no subtitles, so we as an audience do not know what the men who arrest Billy are saying (well, unless you speak Turkish, I guess), and while he is in prison, at least initially, the Turkish spoken by the guards is even more disorienting. This allows the viewer to get some sense of the feelings that Hayes himself has, that he has been trapped in a world where no one understands him and where he understands no one. It does help to make him a more sympathetic character to an American audience when he is one of the few we can completely understand. Of course, that also makes us even more suspicious of the Turks in charge of the justice system, and the film seems to relish its ability to demonize the guards in particular. Every Turk must be dangerous in the world created by this film. No one ever accused Oliver Stone or even Alan Parker, the director, of subtlety. You may remember that Parker also directed another film I've already reviewed here, Mississippi Burning; reread that post if you're interested in how I feel about how Parker tends to handle controversial or sensitive subject matter.

I also have to mention the musical score. Throughout this film, that synthesizer-heavy theme by Giorgio Moroder becomes more and more ominous. It's quite an effective use of music to reinforce a mood, and it's no wonder that the music became almost as popular as the film. I can even recall a disco version of the theme song to Midnight Express. Hey, it was the late 1970s, and disco was all the rage. Try finding many songs from that era that didn't have a disco version. (Actually, I need to see if I can find that version of the song; I'd like to hear it again.)

This film is also filled with some of the most vivid homoerotic imagery I can recall in a mainstream movie, particularly one that is not about the subject of sexuality. Davis spends a large portion of the film shirtless or in his underwear, and his body is shot in a way that makes him an obvious object of desire on the part of the viewer. He and a fellow prisoner exercise (if that's what the kids are calling it these days) so that their bodies become either parallel or mirror images of each other, making the connections between their bodies a focus, especially given the evocative lighting of this particular scene. And even when the film depicts its homoerotic imagery directly, as when Erich attempts to seduce Billy in the shower, the men are allowed to kiss--more than once, too--and caress each other's bodies before Billy politely refuses Erich's advances. That he has allowed Erich to bathe him in an earlier scene only adds to the homoerotic tension between them. Unfortunately, that is also one of the flaws of this film. If you wish to keep your focus on the unjust treatment of prisoners, you probably shouldn't turn your movie into a gay male fantasy, even if it is only briefly. It's a juxtaposition that is just too jarring at times. That may make it, in some ways, more realistic, but as far as a moviegoing experience, it's a bit of a shock.

I do still think this is a strong film whose theme is an important one. Even though it obviously chooses a side and manages to emphasize only the negative qualities of an entire country of people, Midnight Express makes for a compelling film. The attempts to escape that Billy and his fellow prisoners make are harrowing and tense, and the scenes in the psychiatric ward of the prison are frightening for their depictions of the ways that the mentally ill (and those who are merely accused of being mentally ill) are treated. You'll just have to adjust to the idea of having a man who is admittedly guilty of smuggling drugs as your hero. Hayes is not truly a heroic figure, but he is at times depicted as such here, and that may be the most difficult aspect of the film to watch.