Search - Rock Hudson Screen Legend Collection (The Golden Blade / Has Anybody Seen My Gal? / The Last Sunset / The Spiral Road / A Very Special Favor) on DVD

Spiral Road surprise

PJR | Minneapolis, Minnesota United States | 02/28/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"PLOT SPOILER
Spiral road turned out to be an excellent, thoughtful film. It was too long in obscurity. Hudson plays an ambitious doctor and top competitive athlete who feels utterly self-confident. He is not sympathetic to people who can't handle life without community or for example religion.The film has lush tropical atmosphere in color, but such a view of humanity is the core issue here.

Ives is the crusty old world expert on leprosy who is too busy treating patients and coping with jungle life to publish his stack of research findings. He maintains a tough exterior but gains deep respect and affection for Hudson, that he tries to conceal.

PLOT SPOILER
Toward the remarkable ending Hudson cracks under quite strange but believable psychological pressures. He is being outwitted and starts making dumb mistakes as any human might under such alien circumsances. If you are the sort who thinks YOU wound never ever make such mistakes, forget this film. Anyway he falls apart mentally out alone in the jungle. He has to be rescued. All that saves him is that other human beings who love him more than he loves them have come to care about him. It is implied that he comes to realize that loving human bonds are not simply weaknesses but are critical to human survival and give meaning to life.

Elsewhere I read that the film is about atheism versus religious belief. The film does involve missionaries who run a leper colony, Hudson's disdain for religion, and it does end with a quote from the Bible, but the overall characterization is misleading. All these elements largely raise issues for the viewer to ponder. For example suppose Hudson's scientific arguments were correct, and the religious position was wrong. So what? -- Apparently what was really important was the love component in religion as it was presented in the film in the context of care for the lepers and the importance of personal bonds among the doctors in tough situations at the edge of survival. I don't know the book, and it is not impossible that the author originally had a different objective, and that Hudson would have found God in the end. But that was not how the film developed the story.

Hudson and others did quite respectable jobs of acting. Some would say he was out of character, but I would say that the film is rather unusual in any event and any famous actor might seem out of character for some viewers. I liked the way he played the role, however. Gratefully, the actors did not overplay and trivialize the points that I just made. I liked the dialogue. There were some nice thought provoking lines.

This is quite simply a thought provoking film -- it is not an action or adventure film. It is not the usual sort of drama. It is not an inspirational religious film about conversion. It is difficult to put it into the usual categories without raising misleading expectations."