The Postman Review
by Miles Southan (mills AT dhc DOT net)December 22nd, 1997
YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A POSTMAN
Forget the Little Caesars advertisement with the dancing dog. "The Postman" is now the most entertaining commercial I have ever seen. I didn't know until the credits rolled that I had actually been watching a movie - I thought it was an ad for the US Postal Service to help clean their image after all of those disgruntled postal worker controversies. This truly is a propaganda film. Everyone loves the postal service in "The Postman," the mail is always on time, and the Postman from the title is even called a "god send."
I don't mind being brainwashed if I'm having a good time, and for the most part, that's what "The Postman" provides. But don't confuse this flick with the award winning Italian movie "Il Postino" even though there are similarities. Massimo Troisi, the guy who played Mario in "Il Postino" refused to have his heart condition fixed until the filming of "Il Postino" was complete; he died from heart disease one day after production was finished. "The Postman" is so long (190 minutes) that the same thing will probably happen to anyone with a heart condition who goes to see Kevin Costner's "The Postman" and refuses to have his heart fixed until after the movie ends!
Even after the nearly disastrous "WaterWorld," Director Kevin Costner has enough confidence to direct yet another post-apocalyptic future movie. He even gives a nod to the unsuccessful "WaterWorld" by having two characters in "The Postman" discuss a place called "St. Rose," a possibly mythical haven that is talked about in the same terms that DryLand was in WaterWorld. What distinguishes "The Postman" is that it has an especially frightening view of the future. At one point, a town is established that is made up entirely of postal workers... and they're armed!! That's even worse than living on a world completely submerged in water!
In the world of "The Postman," there is no government, food is scarce, towns are terrorized by thieves on horseback, et cetera. Of course things are bad - This is a future movie! Thankfully, the cause of the woes of earth is never bluntly stated. There's nothing I hate more than characters talking about stuff they would already know ("Remember how the apocalypse started?" "How could I forgot when China dropped the bomb on us because we assassinated one of their exchange students?" "Yeah, and remember how we blew up Canada for selling our secrets to the Russian government?"). There are hints that perhaps racial problems caused the deadly conflict. Because of that, I feel that this movie is more important than "Amistad" - and probably more historically accurate too! From what the screenplay tells me, here's my take on what happened - after California passed Proposition 209 banning use of race in hiring, there was a huge war in America. This is a helpful message - "Do the Right Thing" and don't nationally abolish affirmative action or most of us will die!
And this certainly is a message movie. Another message is that improved communications will bring peace to the world, and that's terrific, but this movie never dealt with the problem of countries overseas with inhabitants who speak foreign languages. That's how these wars get started - ignorant tourists go on vacation to an unusual place and irritate the wrong people. Judging from the ending of "The Postman," maybe the world wised up and accepted English as the only truly holy tongue.
After I heard Kevin Costner's first line, I thought to myself - "This movie was really good until the characters started talking," because the visuals are excellent. The dialog sounds very bad and bookish at first, but it gets less bad. To his credit, Kevin was talking to a mule at the beginning, so he probably wasn't too concerned with intelligent conversation.
You can watch "The Postman" and pay attention only to the surface of it and still like it, but I wasn't content to do that - I wanted to analyze all of its metaphorical complexities, complexities that I'm sure it doesn't know it has. Little does Kevin Costner realize, he has directed a brilliant satirical political allegory.
"The Postman" details the ultimate battle between whining big government liberals and selfish wimpy gun-worshiping libertarians. I guess that explains the movie's catch phrase: "Similar names. Dissimilar ideologies."
The villain in this picture is named, symbolically I guess, Bethlehem. He represents former libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne. At the end, not only does this guy get blocked from the presidential debates, he's shot in the chest! How do you like near-anarchy now, Browne?? The problem I had with the ending is that it glossed over the inevitable huge tax hike when the liberals won. It instead focuses on the fact that because Bethleham is killed with a gun, Postman uses the oppurtunity to sign a gun control bill called the "Bethleham Bill," which creates a two-week waiting period for firearm purchases. President Starkie would be proud, Kevie!
Bethlehem is the leader of a "clan" of warriors who go from town to town and accept handouts because they are feared. They are also constantly recruiting people for their army, but in such small numbers that I don't understand why they even bother. Kevin Costner happens to enter a town just before it is struck by the bandits, and Bethlehem happens to choose him as one of the new soldiers.
Bethlehem's army takes Kevin Costner back to their marvelous looking camp and cooks his mule. It is here that the new soldiers are trained and Bethlehem demonstrates his devotion to libertarianism, shows off his love for Shakespeare, and his tendency to punish those who are slow learners. These are your usual bad guy soldier types, but one thing makes them different - they hate to watch "Universal Soldier," but love to watch classics like "The Sound of Music."
Bethlehem's hero is a farmer turned author/libertarian activist named Nathan. Nathan wrote an anti-government book that Bethlehem reads an obscure quote from. When this book, titled "I Want to Tell You," was published, it evidently helped Nathan start this whole mess that destroyed the world. I'll never understand these libertarian farmers. They want to overthrow the nation's government and destroy every living creature, yet they STILL want their farm subsidies! In his book, Nathan states that the government should be abolished and replaced with the "Rules of 8." If I remember right, those rules are: 1. Obey the head of the "clan." 2. Mercy is for the weak (That's more of an opinion than a rule). 3. Punishment is swift. 4. Punishment is death. 5. No food after midnight. 6. Keep away from water. 7. Stay away from bright light. 8. Anyone can challenge the head of the "clan." I think a lot of those rules are a little redundant. I could have condensed them down to six at most.
Kevin Costner is named Shakespeare by the libertarians because he was an actor before the "Really REALLY big war," and as one of the villagers in the beginning points out, he's Really REALLY bad at acting. Another thing that characters like to point out about Kevin is that he's "funny," but some of the quips he makes that are supposed to make him Mr. Comedian make me long for Joe Piscapo.
Kevin escapes from the camp, and not that it's much of a surprise, but this is another one of those movies where it's impossible to kill the good guy even with excellent marksmen and unlimited bullets, but it's easy to kill the bad guys. When Kevin is floating down a river at a steady speed, bullets splash all around him, but later on when he's captured by the baddies, he's rescued easily by a gun-toting love interest.
Kevin's escape is followed by one of the most unintentionally hilarious scenes in the movie. It's very cold and Kevin discovers a wrecked car. He hides inside of it and finds a skeleton wearing a postman's uniform and holding a bag of mail. He puts the uniform on to stay warm and finds a lighter near the skeleton. As he strikes the flint, he grunts like a caveman. "Look, ma! I discovered fire!"
The next morning, Kevin, soon to be known as Postman, walks to the Pristine Town of PineView, and is let in the gates because he has a letter for one of the citizens. The townspeople love him even though the sheriff is suspicious, and at a dance that night, a woman named Abby asks him to get her pregnant, because she has a husband who can't produce a baby because he had a case of the "Bad Mumps." "Bad Mumps"? Is that the clinical term? Abby explains that she'd rather get pregnant by a wanderer who wouldn't stick around and make her and her husband uncomfortable. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for Postman and for the plot, her husband is later conveniently killed, paving the way for a romantic relationship between Postman and Abby.
In PineView, Postman meets a starry-eyed optimistic youth named Ford Lincoln Mercury who wants to be a Postman too. He must have seen those "Be All That You Can Be" commercials. Postman invents an oath and dubs Ford Lincoln Mercury second postman in command. Ford later organizes a whole fleet of postmen.
The thrust of the story is that the country starts to become more patriotic and nationalistic because of the mail deliveries, and Bethlehem's tyranny starts being questioned. Bethlehem reveals his anti-Americanism when he forces Abby's soon to be dead husband to burn an American flag. Hey Newt! Where's the flag burning Amendment when we need it?
The best unintentionally funny part in the movie is the scene where Postman rides past a sad-faced kid who is holding a letter up in the air. He rides on for quite a while after that, and the kid says to his disenheartened mother: "I guess I missed him." But wait! The Postman must have overheard from nearly a mile away. He stops. He looks behind him. He turns around, and... he takes off back towards the kid! He was very far away, but for some reason, he's only a foot away from the kid after a couple of seconds. And in slow motion, Postman heroically grabs for the letter still in the air, and takes it from the formerly sad-faced child. When the scene was played again at the end, I think I saw written in fine print in the corner of the screen, "paid for by the Government of the United States of America."
Soft money will be pouring in to pay for the huge amounts of airtime for the democrats to show this movie and say - "Do you want the world to turn into a desert wasteland like in 'The Postman'? Then make the right choice. Vote Democrat!" But 190 minutes is way too long for an attack ad, so I imagine they'll cut out all the parts where Kevin is doing his really bad Shakespeare routine. We can't have our spokesman looking like a dweeb!
The only thing conservative about this movie is that it advocates increased military funding, but only temporarily so that the postmen can get disgruntled and kill a whole slew of libertarians. In fact, that's the best scene in the entire movie. After the "Postal Massacre" wherein the postal workers blast their way to victory against the libertarian fleet, I was able to appreciate the realism of the movie and the convincingness of the characters' portrayal of insane postal workers. Finally the bottled up anger in postal workers is put to constructive use!
This movie has everything. One of Kevin Costner's most heroic moments is when he sees the smoke from Rush Limbaugh's cigar floating from around a rock, and he shoots him dead without even looking. There's even a riddle. Kevin Costner as Postman asks, "How much mail can a dead postman deliver?" It's a great question, but the filmmakers had the gall not to answer it. I suppose it was more "artsy" and "gutsy" to leave it up to our imaginations.
The key to tricking people into liking bad movies is to get them hooked in with likeable characters, and I'll admit that I fell for the ploy. To tolerate this movie you have to forgive it for a lot of detriments, and I was willing to forgive and let the movie grow on me.
One thing this movie has going for it is that it's so long, that there just had to be some good stuff in it, even if it was accidental. Studios, take note - next time you force a director to cut scenes before distribution, you're probably requesting the only good scenes to be taken out!
Mostly what I admired was the picture's emotional aspects, even if they are sappy a lot of the time. The battle scenes are pretty standard, and at the end when Postman is riding around on a horse between two lines of soldiers, the filmmakers actually used stolen footage from "Dances With Wolves!"
I had very mixed feelings while watching "The Postman." I didn't know whether to cheer or throw up! Overall, I enjoyed the film, but there is much not to like. There are moments of questionable character motivation, a silly rescue scene, and really bad lines of dialog ("You're weird"). I probably wouldn't encourage anyone to see this movie, but I wouldn't try to stop anyone who already wanted to go.
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