I can't remember exactly when I first saw this movie; probably it was during the 1992-1994 Caltech period when I was devouring a lot of movies for the first time, but there's some chance that I caught at least part of this movie earlier on some television rebroadcast. My RL family had no VCR for a long while, and never went to see movies—never went anywhere, really, except shopping—so until college I'd see movies only through broadcast TV, or rarely because they were shown in school or I was lucky to catch something at another kid's house.
I can be so [expletive deleted] glib about movies, but I can't think exactly of what I'd like to say about Russell Mulcahy's Highlander. It's "problematical", as the kids say; it's an exercise in wh!te Western fantasy tropes. But it's not bad enough to shun; the movie is even capable of bringing tears to my eyes, although I think that's mainly because of Brian May and the supreme power of Freddie Mercury's voice, lending a sense of power and depth to the flimsy script and lackluster performances.
The Wikipedia article on Highlander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highlander_(film) ) is instructive and revealing; Clancy Brown says that they were fighting the cheapjack production company the entire way—the British Thatcher-era producers even managed to provoke a rebellion from the film crew by refusing to provide extras with breakfast. The original script gave The Kurgan more of a character and some backstory, emphasizing the loneliness of his ruthless path through life, but I'm guessing that the producers wanted a stock villain who played into all the 1980s media stereotypes about punk-styled hooligans whom you didn't want your kids dating.
The fact that making the movie was genuinely an uphill struggle is, perhaps, why it still works. And it does. I have to admit it—the original Highlander movie resounds with sincerity.
(cont'd)
It's so generic, almost devoid of worldbuilding; when MacLeod questions Ramirez about why there are Immortals or a Quickening or The Prize, the question barely even registers. "Why does the sun come up, hmm? Or are the stars just pinholes in the curtain of night?" The implication is clear: such searching questions about ultimate purposes are for philosophers to debate, and Ramirez sees only the practical side of things: for whatever reasons he's one of the Immortals, and that puts Ramirez and all the other immortals in danger of losing their heads if they're not wise to the rules that constrain them. Nobody in Highlander says this outright but it feels like a necessity, like an equivalent exchange: immortality is a great gift, but there's a price to be paid for it. MacLeod and the others can't simply wade through the world without restraint.
The Kurgan can, though, because it seems that he's physically stronger than all the other Immortals, and so he's wild and uncontrollable; presumably every other Immortal who's ever met him is dead, and the flashback scenes to MacLeod's youth suggest that the Kurgan has been making doubly sure of himself by tracking down Immortals who aren't yet aware of their nature, and getting the drop on them. if there's just one big Prize that exactly one person can win—well then! might as well cheat a bit, and make the job easier. Highlander doesn't do a lot with The Kurgan, though at least Clancy Brown gives him some panache. As a villain he's so 1980s-stereotypical that he even manages to be Russian (thanks to a throwaway bit of Ramirez exposition) as well as checking off all the other 80s boxes. Punk safety pins? check. Wailing guitar riffs to let you know he's evil? check. Crimes with cars? check. Gratuitous sexual assault? check.... 🙄
Meanwhile, Russell Nash ("Russell" huh) is thoroughly unappetizing in his 1980s antique-dealer persona. I guess he's supposed to seem like an embittered loner shielding himself with ironical humor, but instead he comes across as smarmy, passive-aggressive, creepy towards Brenda—oh heavens, this movie is not kind to its women characters. "Nash" was better when he was simply MacLeod. The movie supplies him with a sort of Alfred-the-Butler stock sidekick to humanize him a bit, a faithful "girl Friday" assistant named Rachel Ellenstein, who (in a rather tasteless and appropriative plot twist) turns out to be a refugee from the Third Reich whom MacLeod saved with the help of his invulnerability to bullets. ("It's a kind of magic," he whispers to the surprised Rachel by way of explanation, and I have to admit I smiled at that) I feel like it says something about the main character that they have to show him machine-gunning a Nazi to make him seem a bit more likable.
And this points straight at a great irony of Highlander: MacLeod sardonically acknowledges the "master race" before shooting the Nazi dead, and it might seem like a cute action-movie punchline, but think about who's saying it! the whole point of the movie is that there's a real "master race" of sorts, a select band of Immortals who follow their own rules and over whom the winner of the Prize has godlike powers—at the end of the film, MacLeod is talking about how he can perceive the thoughts of anyone on Earth. We're invited to share MacLeod's jaded perspective on humanity: he's lonely, brooding, suffering in silence, and he's barely able to endure the intrusions of ordinary humanity into his insular life.
Friendship, love, emotional warmth and honest smiles—all those belong in the distant past. Hardly any 1980s human being in Highlander is better than a pathetic (or a repellent) stereotype of some sort. Any right-wing fantasy fan looking for validation of their belief in a glorious and heroic Past decaying into a corrupt and degraded Present will find what they want in Highlander. The modern city is the usual sinkhole of vice and crime that "heartland" audiences want to see in movies. The evil Kurgan seems at home amid the urban decay; MacLeod has to hide from it. And it feels slightly significant that the Immortals' immortal orgasms—er, I mean their fits of Quickening—lay waste to all the technology round them. Cars blow up, electrical devices go haywire, buildings shed pieces; it's like the Immortals are the primal forces of Nature, blasting away the futile constructions of modern humanity. Inevitably, the movie ends where MacLeod started, amid green mountainsides and the open sky.
It's beyond me (for the moment) how anyone thought this was franchise material; Highlander is such a simple and straightforward tale that it feels admirably self-contained, with a satisfyingly mythic sort of conclusion. I've seen almost none of the followup material. I caught part of Highlander 2 on TV, only enough to know that it was goofy—although weirdly, the subplot about the evil corporation effectively holding the upper atmosphere hostage feels accidentally prescient. And I've never seen any of the television series they made.
Hrm. I feel like there's more to say. Some other time.
~Chara of Pnictogen
