Film Review: ‘Lonely Planet’ – A Disappointingly Orientalist Perspective

In the middle of the newly released Netflix film “Lonely Planet,” a group of writers on a writer’s retreat in Morocco are playing a game akin to charades that requires knowledge of literary culture. In terms of the plot, the purpose of this game is to show the character of Owen Brophy (Liam Hemsworth) as ignorant of literature and help to broaden a rift between him and his partner Lily Kemp (Diana Silvers) to move him closer to commencing a relationship with the lead character Katherine Loewe (Laura Dern). In the game, heavyweight names are thrown about, such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Simone de Beauvoir. Particularly interesting, though, is that among them are the novelists Gustave Flaubert and Joseph Conrad.

What is particularly interesting is that these two writers have a certain notoriety concerning their depictions of Africa. It is impossible that they are brought into the film to critique their outlook, even though implicitly. The criticisms that are leveled against these two writers apply to this dissatisfactory film as well. Indeed, it is quite shocking that the film seems to have blindly sought to give itself a bit of intellectual kudos through these names without realizing the irony attached to them.

In one of the most famous literary essays of modern times, the Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe takes issue with Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness.” Aware that Conrad is “one of the great stylists of modern fiction and a good storyteller into the bargain,” Achebe also regards him as “a thoroughgoing racist” and makes a compelling case that in the “Heart of Darkness,” “Africa (serves) as a setting and a backdrop which eliminates the African as a human factor.” Achebe also takes issue with its “preposterous and perverse arrogance in … reducing Africa to the role of props for” a “petty” drama involving Europeans. All in all, it is a work that evinces “the dehumanization of Africa and Africans.”

As for Flaubert, in the film, he is given a larger presence than simply being featured in a party game. As Katherine and Owen draw closer together, Katherine quotes Flaubert as to the value of travel. She tells him that: “Flaubert said the point of travel was to make us modest. To show us the tiny place we occupy in the world.” Though Flaubert also ranks among the greatest writers in the Western tradition, there is an irony here in that a personal work of his on North Africa, available today as “Flaubert in Egypt,” not only evinces a far from tiny ego and lack of modesty but is also an egregious work of Orientalism.

That Conrad and Flaubert write this way does not make them atypical of their time. Zenobia Ismail, an academic at the University of Birmingham, points out that “colonized regions were misrepresented in Western art or media as being exotic, childlike and backward.” This is part of her definition of Orientalism, a mindset to which Morocco has long been subjected in the West.

What can be said for Conrad and Flaubert is that they were both born in the 19th century, a century in which racism was rife, with people from Africa still being enslaved and directly exploited by Westerners. Of course, from then to now, a great deal of time has passed, and it is expected that great progress will also be made in attitudes. Unfortunately, “Lonely Planet” does not demonstrate any meaningful progress of this type at all. This is especially shocking since the last few years have supposedly seen a reckoning with racism in Western countries.

The Orientalism in this film is pervasive. Aside from the brief glimpse of the modern airport with which the film opens, the picture drawn of Morocco in the movie is essentially the same as the “exotic” and simplistic one drawn by the Orientalists of the past. The film has herded sheep that block the road, palm groves, men who dance by the road, rocky desert, animal-drawn carts, camels, rugs and hashish smoking, albeit in the writer’s retreat. There is an excursion to a blue-washed Berber town with its colorful market. And, of course, the central location of the film is nothing else but the Kasbah A’shab, a Maghrebi palace. Even the key sexual focus of Orientalism, the harem, is present, albeit historically. When the writers visit Qubbat al-Khayzuran, we learn from the character Rafih Abdo (Younes Boucif) that “it was named after Sultan’s favorite concubine.” Also, as in Orientalist work, the adhan, or call to prayer, is featured to make scenes more “exotic.” In one, it is used when the sun is actually rising. Not only is the call to prayer not made at this time, but Muslims are specifically forbidden from worship at the rising and setting of the sun. I have to say that learning this would have taken little effort from the filmmakers.

What makes this stereotyping film such a stereotype of Orientalism itself is not that, save for the wrongly timed adhan, these aforementioned elements do not exist in Morocco. Rather, it is that by using them to the almost complete exclusion of all the factors that make Morocco a modern nation, a picture is created that makes the population of the country seem backward and simplistic. This is amplified by the scenes with Arab characters in which they seem childishly eager to help out the Westerners, who return their eagerness with either patronizing snideness or condescension.

Moreover, the idea that what the Westerners in the film represent is “normal” and Morocco is “exotic” is left unchallenged in the film, even though with it being set in Morocco, it is the Westerners who are, in fact, not normal. Moreover, what “other” means to these Westerners is used as cheap humor for the audience. For instance, at one point, Owen and Katherin see goats standing in a tree to eat its leaves. Owen says, “Does that look normal to you?” Katherine replies, “No. Definitely not.” This couple is also so arrogant in what they take to be normal that they even kiss in the street, though this could be problematic to local mores. Then, there is also the assumption that there is something wrong with Morocco even though they have come to visit it. Owen’s eating a sandwich in town causes him to have stomach issues and prevents him from traveling on an overnight excursion to the desert, which Katherine also skips, dismissing it with the remark: “Seen it. Doubt it’s changed.”

The country is also contradictorily used as a foil to the supposedly complex lives of these Westerners. Toward the end of the film, on the Atlantic Coast of Morocco. Katherine muses on remaining in the country permanently to “get a little apartment, become a fisherwoman,” to which Own adds, “Can I stay too?” This reinforces the Orientalist idea of the Moroccans as a different type of people – simple with simple occupations.

To return to Achebe, with this film, the West has once again proved itself incapable of seeing Africa as he puts it, “simply as a continent of people – not angels, but not rudimentary souls either – just people, often highly gifted people and often strikingly successful in their enterprise with life and society.”

However, what can be said for “Heart of Darkness,” or more recently the 2003 film “Lost in Translation” that similarly patronizes its setting in Japan, is that, if its stereotyping can be partially ignored, at least the story concerning the Westerners themselves is of interest. However, such a claim cannot be made for this film either, as this overview of its characters will now make clear.

Characters

The main character of the film is Katherine. She is a writer whose literary success stretches all the way back to her college years. Since then, she has written prolifically and has received numerous awards. She has also recently come out of a 14-year relationship with an artist who had diagnosed her as having “a heart incapable of love.”

She is in Morocco, working on her book. The viewer is made sure of this by it being repeated throughout the film. Toward the beginning, for instance, Katherine says, “I’m just here to work.” Her workaholic nature is supposedly of an exceptional degree. Her ex-partner calls her from the U.S. to insist she finally moves out of their shared place there. She tells him, “I’ve been busy. I’m writing,” to which he replies, “Oh Kath if we wait for you to stop writing to move out, you’ll live here forever.” Much later, Owen asks her, “Are you ever not writing?” As for her place in the palace of the writer’s retreat, she insists she just needs “to get some quiet” and needs “to concentrate.” Katherine is thus set up as antisocial, at least toward her fellow writers, and is obsessed with finding peace in writing. Even so, this leaves unanswered questions as to why she needs to fly halfway across the world for it and why she would expect to find it in a writer’s retreat, which by its very nature is at least somewhat social.

She is put in the best room of the palace. However, it turns out the water system here does not work. When repairs are undertaken by what else but two stereotypically loud and jester-like Arab workers, she demands: “I just need a quiet place somewhere. I mean, honestly, it doesn’t have to be nice. I work best in grubby spaces. Literally, a closet would be ideal. Anything.” She winds up in the storage room that has no plumbing. Surely, such an obsessed writer could have simply spared herself all this trouble by asking for the repairs in her room to be suspended.

What makes even less sense is that this supposedly obsessed writer has been working on her book for two years, writing it on a computer but not backing up her work. I am far inferior a writer to what Katherine is set up to be and the pieces I write for this newspaper only take me a few days. Even so, at the end of each day’s writing, I still save what I have done onto a flash disc. The only version of Katherine’s prized novel is, however, on her computer, which she is later seen nonchalantly carrying around with her in her bag rather than securing it in the safe of the hotel in which she is staying. This allows for another plot development, which once again relies on stereotyping the local people. Two young Arab men pass on a scooter, and one snatches her bag, causing her to lose all of the work she has done for the last two years.

The distraught Katherine then underlines her raison d’etre once again. She exclaims: “I just have my writing. That’s it.” If the reader feels that I have labored the point of Katherine’s status too much, I am simply reflecting on the film. Oddly, though, her status does not strike home very well. Rather, much like the individual who suspects themselves of a character flaw and will often positively verbally express themselves to try and overcome it, the film does the same with Katherine. While she appears to be as much a writer as any of the other characters on the retreat, she simply does not come across as obsessed with her craft. Indeed, she is shown spending a great deal of her time away from her work before and after the relationship between her and Owen begins.

As for Owen, though, he is an even more poorly drawn character than her. He works in private equity but looks as obsessed with business as Katherine does with writing. Thus, in the dilemma that is set up for him toward a client whose trust he has earned of whether to act according to what “business” heartlessly demands or listen to his “feelings,” there is no real conflict at all. A similar dilemma in the 1990 film “Pretty Woman,” which may even have inspired this one, is presented in a much more powerful way.

It is clear that the reason Owen is in the film is to provide a love interest for Katherine and nothing more. The point of interest here is that he is much younger than her. One of the current trends in Hollywood is to present relationships with an age gap in which the woman is older than the man. This is to be welcomed. Yet, to be any good, a love story requires a passionate chemistry between the characters, which is absent here. The two are thrown together a lot and show some interest in each other, but while their coming together is never in doubt, what attracts them to one another is somewhat vague. Also, the way the plot moves their relationship onwards involves a demeaning of Morocco, from the mocking of the Berber town and its handicrafts, a case of food poisoning from the sandwich, to the theft of the computer near the end.

Of the minor characters, the most prominent is Lily. She is Owen’s partner when they arrive together at the palace, though all but the most un-astute viewer is then already aware that they will not stay together. Lily is a newly successful writer, revealing her view of herself among the other “literary giants” as “a total fraud” who only “wrote a glorified beach read.” Her self-esteem issues and interactions with the more established writers could have been an interesting subplot to the film. Also, an evolution of her profound admiration for Katherine could have been made use of as her partner leaves her for that writer. Yet, in this highly simplistic movie, she only serves one purpose: to be in a relationship with Owen that needs to end for him to go off with Katherine instead.

This is done by Owen constantly finding fault with Lily despite her not doing anything unforgivable until the final break. This occurs when proof that Lily has been unfaithful to him is revealed. However, as Owen has by then already tried to cheat on her with Katherine, he has no moral high ground from which to launch his new relationship. Yet, in the film, nothing is made of his hypocrisy.

The other minor characters leave so little impression there would be no point in dealing with them. However, for a different reason, I must touch on Rafi, who is arguably the main Arab character in the film. He, too, is a writer, and his work is a “memoir” of his being a “child soldier in Libya.” With such a background, an exploration of the effects of early trauma on a person’s personality could have been made. Nevertheless, he serves instead absolutely no purpose but to be the stereotypical Arab man who is enchanted by a fair-skinned Western woman – here Lily – and who has the relationship with her alluded to just above.

All in all, this is a second-rate film, in particular, due to its Orientalism that denies full humanity to the Moroccan people. This is especially regrettable as, at this time, at the other end of the Mediterranean, Arab life is quite literally being treated as shockingly cheap. Such Orientalism and a poor story make this a film that cannot be recommended.

Review: 1 out of 5.