Hawaii (DVD)

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Von Sydow isn't bad, mind you, nor is Richard Harris as the whaling captain who had a thing for Jerusha and tries all he can to win her back. Gene Hackman seems positively miscast as the rational and soft-spoken Rev. John Whipple, and yet we forget that he was ever Popeye Doyle. Even Carroll O'Connor in a beard, playing Jerusha's father in a brief role, is surprisingly believable. But aside from the breathtaking scenery (the film was shot on location), it's the performances of the two women—Andrews and LaGarde—that give this epic heart. And of course, both women are deliberately portrayed in a more sympathetic way, since they're carriers of Michener's message. While her husband tries to convert by force, and reacts with rage at every "heathen" custom, needing to be restrained half the time, Mrs. Hale ministers to the people the way a nurse would, or a mother. And when, after Hale curses the people, an outbreak of measles, brought to the island by one of the sailors, threatens to wipe out half the population, he assumes it was his call to God that brought the plague. "What else has the power to annihilate them?" he asks his wife. And through Jerusha, Michener lets him and others like him have it right between the eyes: "Disease, despair, our lack of love, our inability to find them beautiful, our contempt for their ways, our lust for their land, our greed, our arrogance—that is what kills them, Abner, and that is what you must save them from."

Unfortunately, the turnaround made by the aging Rev. Hale (who begins to look a bit like Alastair Sim's Scrooge) is too sudden, and not nearly developed enough. I don't have a 189-minute print to make comparisons, and it's been so long since I've seen this film, but my guess is that most of the missing 27 minutes came from the second half of the movie. One leap is particularly jarring, whether it was in the original version or a jump cut made for continuity. As the Rev. Hale's young son shouts "Father, Father!" we fast-forward a good 10 years as the husky-voiced fellow in his late teens shouts the same thing. And the overlapping between the church and land-grabbing politics isn't explored nearly enough. In short, "Hawaii" was an enjoyable "7" for the first two-thirds, but the herky-jerky last third drags it down.

Video: At least the aspect ratio was preserved, with the unrated film (there are several National Geographic-style scenes of topless Hawaiian women) looking breathtaking during sweeping shots of sunsets and mountains in anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1 ratio). There's slight graininess in some scenes, but overall the picture quality is quite good.

Audio: The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is clear and relatively free of distortion, but Elmer Bernstein's soundtrack would sound so much better with a 5.1 mix. The 2.0 Mono is inoffensive, but also nothing that really enhances the viewing experience. Subtitle options are English, French, and Spanish.

Extras: In addition to the trailer, there's an interesting "making of" featurette that's vinage—and it shows its age. The sound is extremely rough, and the color is washed out—with the quality as bad as those old 8mm home movies discovered years later in a bedroom closet. But Andrews does a voiceover and is shown on camera during location filming, and we learn that the sea crossing sequence was filmed near the Artic Circle, while other portions were filmed on location in Massachusetts and Oahu—where the crew constructed a historically accurate Lahaina whaling town from the 1800s. It took seven years of preparation and three years in production (including a month filming in Hawaii) to make the epic, and it's a shame that after all that work and attention to detail the final DVD print isn't the original version.

Bottom Line: It's impossible to tell if the original 189-minute print doesn't exist anymore, or if MGM felt that today's ADD audiences couldn't handle a film that long. But "Hawaii" will leave viewers wondering whether the flaws in the film are a result of contemporary editors trying to fit it onto a single disc, or the director's flawed vision. That's too bad. But fans of Michener and and those who yearn for paradise will still want to own this one, and roll with the waves. Bernstein's music and gorgeous footage of Hawaii can help to smooth things over, and two solid thirds of an epic is still worth watching.