FILM / Local Hero / Joe Boulter
Image © Warner Bros.
A classic of British cinema, Local Hero (1983) is written and directed by Bill Forsyth and tells the story of Mac Macintyre’s (Peter Riegert) mission to buy up an entire village in Scotland to build an oil refinery.
Many have seen Local Hero, most have fallen in love with the fictional village of Ferness in which it is set, and a significant few have written about it. Mark Kermode claims to have watched it hundreds of times. I must confess this was only my second viewing, though it would come as no surprise if I was to one day join Mark in the hallowed ground of the triple digits.
The film centres around Mac’s journey towards an enlightenment of the soul. At the beginning we see him driving his Porsche, a consumerist motivated only by profit, someone who is materially wealthy but spiritually poor. In short, a fairly unlikeable character. It’s only when he travels to Scotland that we see a transformation.
The initial bravado of his negotiations with Denis Lawson’s Gordon Urquhart gradually dissipates as he falls in love with the landscape and its endearing population. Talks of figures and percentages give way to days playing bare foot in the rock pools, expensive suits give way to woolly jumpers and rolled up trousers. Eventually he even pleads with Gordon to swap places with him, willing to forego the car, the house, the 80k a year job, even his 50k in mixed securities, in favour of the simpler life.
It’s a masterfully handled character development. Subtle and believable, it’s as if this element of his character was always there but was never able to properly surface because of the hustle and bustle of a metropolis like Houston, and the exploitative nature of the oil company for which he worked.
Such a transformation is indicative of Forsyth’s stance on the corrupting nature of money. It certainly isn’t a film which is lacking in anti-capitalist (and anti-American) sentiment. Whether it be in the fisherman who doesn’t eat his own lobster—which is destined for Paris or London—because they’re too expensive or in the despondent reflections of a resident at the ceilidh:
‘I thought all this money would make me feel different, all it’s done is make me feel depressed.’
To which his friend replies:
‘Nobody ever said it was going to be easy to be a millionaire.’
A more sentimental film would have positioned the residents in opposition to the deal. Instead, financial destitution leaves them with no choice but to willingly embrace the advances of Knox Oil and Gas who callously intrude on generations of tradition.
Nor does Forsyth absolve the viewer of responsibility. When Mac contemplates a world without oil, we’re reminded of how reliant we are on it for cars, paint, polish, ink, nylon, detergent, waterproof coats . . .
But who is driving this intrusion? Enter Felix Happer.
Burt Lancaster’s Happer symbolises Forsyth’s critique of the capitalist system, and it’s perhaps fitting that Lancaster demanded $2m to play the role, a third of the film’s entire budget. A president of an oil company with unlimited wealth and power—’I’m sorry your excellency but Mr Happer can’t talk right now, if you could ask his supreme highness to call back in half an hour’—he is perhaps the most lost character in the entire film.
Trapped in a hi-tech office which serves as his golden prison, we witness Happer attempting to address his unhappiness with the “help” of his therapist, Moritz, played by Norman Chancer. As you might expect, Moritz’s techniques (which include ringing his client to call him a “useless piece of shit”) are ultimately unsuccessful. There’s a much darker undertone to these scenes in Houston, with an intentional jarring quality that hits you like a slap in the face when you’re unexpectedly dragged from the beautiful simplicity of life in Furness.
Happer’s only true solace lies in his fascination with the stars, which no doubt serves as an escape from the oppressive world that he inhabits. But even this pursuit is restricted to the confines of his prison, a state-of-the-art planetarium which is no substitute for the real thing. Instead, he must live vicariously through Mac’s disjointed descriptions of the Furness sky, gorgeously captured by the cinematographer Chris Menges who was nominated for a Bafta for his work on the film.
Just as with Mac, Happer’s very presence in Furness begins to visibly salve his soul. It was Happer’s father who had originally bought out the Scotsman, Knox, and you get the sense that he’s on a search for some form of atonement, or at least he’s attempting to break the cycle of American exploitation.
We see this in his conversations with Ben Knox. In choosing to have Happer versus Knox as the climax, Forsyth effectively pits the capitalist ideal against the only true moral compass of the film. And it’s in the outcome of this negotiation—the decision to scrap the oil refinery and build a marine laboratory—that morality wins out. Cue that Mark Knopfler soundtrack . . .
Joe Boulter is a freelance writer with a focus on film and sport. His previous work has been published by the likes of Tifo Football and The Culture Division. His Twitter handle is @joe_boulter
