When Heath Ledger died, I put all of his movies in my queue because he was an incredible actor. Over 9 years later, I finally got around to watching The Four Feathers before it expired on Hulu without knowing anything else about the movie. After I watched it, I found out that people seem to really like the story, and it has been adapted to film numerous times. WHY?!? The story makes no sense.
The action unfolds in the late 1800s during the height of colonialism. There are two locations: the United Kingdom and Sudan. Ledger is the son of and in training to be a British officer. He is widely admired by his friends, has his father’s approval and is engaged to Smurfette, the only eligible single woman, played by Kate Hudson with a breathy, soft-spoken delivery. When he gets his first commission to serve, he freaks out and realizes that he has never actually wanted this job, but just doing it to make everyone happy then quits. Here is a missed opportunity to explore the mind process of war and why he is suddenly against it, but no, that would make sense. Three of his alleged friends and his fiancé give him by delivery a white feather, which symbolizes being called a coward. Instead of asking for his job back or saying screw those people, they never really liked me, he does the most by sneaking into the Sudan to unofficially protect them while pretending to be an Arab man. No, really, we are supposed to believe that Ledger is Arab, and his character can navigate a foreign country during a time of conflict without really speaking the language, street signs or a smartphone.
For inexplicable reasons, he gets a magical Negro who decides to totally help him even if that means Hedger’s loserbag friends, who are unsurprisingly totally racist and beat his ass for having the nerve to speak English and know more than they do. Because they are arrogant and have no business being in Ireland, forget the Sudan, the loserbag friends get their asses handed to them (cue The Simpsons’ Nelson, “Ha Ha”). Ledger spends the rest of the movie playing Captain Save a Ho. One by one, everyone takes back their feather, becomes friends and engaged again, which I think is unacceptable. I already think that it is ridiculous that Ledger’s character went to these lengths to prove a point instead of just getting his job back, but after they recall the feather, he should have dumped them anyway because they did not prove to him that they were not shit. His fiancé got engaged seconds later to his best friend then dumped that guy when he got injured in battle. That chick is not loyal. Do not marry her! There is probably some unseen third guy in the wings that she was going to get engaged to if he did not turn up again. Seriously, you can do so much better. Ledger is basically military Jesus complete with the single set of footsteps in the sand when he was carrying them. NOT getting their approval should be the badge of honor. They are all trash. All of them can go frack themselves.
I know that the filmmakers tried to modernize the story ever so slightly because it clearly sympathized with the Sudan locals more than the colonialists in the film. Slavery is supposed to be over why are you beating your contractors because I know that they are not getting benefits. The Four Feathers clearly created moments for the audience to cheer when karma smacked them in the head for that nonsense, but the story still does not translate into today’s sensibilities. I get why it made sense when it was originally created, but we have a Presidon’t who used bone spurs to get out of service, and some people consider him a patriot. This story needs to stop being circulated. We definitely don’t have the same standards-unless you’re John Kerry and actually served in Vietnam, but somehow THAT is also not good enough. I don’t know the rules. They keep changing.
Side note: the director is Indian, but he moved to the United Kingdom and has lived there ever since. Ledger is Australian. The production company, Hudson and Wes Bentley are Americans. What makes a film British or American?