Robinson Crusoe (1997 film)

Infobox Film


name = Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Dafoe's Robinson Crusoe
director = Rod Hardy
George T. Miller
writer = Christopher Lofton
producer = Njeri Karango
starring = Pierce Brosnan
William Takaku
Polly Walker
Ian Hart
James Frain
Damien Lewis
Martin Grace
music = Jennie Muskett
cinematography = David Connell
editing = Sue Blainey
Richard Bracken
Tod Scott Brady
Gregg Featherman
Keith Reamer
Kevin Stitt
David Zieff
distributor = ABC
released = flagicon|USA flagicon|Europe May 1995
flagicon|Singapore 12 June 1997
runtime = 92 min approx.
country = flagicon|USA United States
language = English
budget =
gross =
imdb_id = 0117496

"Robinson Crusoe" is a 1997 film directed by Rod Hardy and George T. Miller and stars Pierce Brosnan plays Robinson Crusoe in this loose adaptation of Daniel Defoe's classic novel.

Plot Summary

Robinson Crusoe is an adventurer who hopes to find fame and fortune while traveling the seas but a gigantic ocean storm wrecks his ship and leaves him stranded on an uncharted island. Crusoe seeks out to survive on the island on his own. Then he meets Friday, played by Wiliam Takaku, who is a tribesman living on the island. First Crusoe is thrilled to finally have someone to talk to but then he discovers there is another tribe also living on the island. So Crusoe and Friday must team up together to take out the other tribe before they kill them.

Differences from the Novel

Although titled "Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe" in various releases, the film differs markedly from the book. In the film Crusoe goes to sea to escape the consequences of a duel he fought over a woman, in which he killed his adversary. The woman, Mary, urges him to leave for a year. In the book there is no duel, and he leaves for sea voluntarily against his parents' wishes. His time at sea is shown to be on one ship, not several as in the book.His island is off the coast of New Guinea in the film, a whole ocean away from the book's island off the mouth of the Orinoco River.His relationship with Friday is very different, Crusoe being portrayed as a heavy-handed puritan in the film, whose attempts to convert Friday meet with failure, and who appears to come to a relativist position acknowledging the supposed dignity of Friday's pagan beliefs. This completely inverts the theology of the original book, in which Friday is converted from his paganism.Crusoe's rescue in the book occurs when he helps the captain of a mutinous vessel in return for a passage home. The mutineers are left on the island instead. In the film, Crusoe is wounded by Friday's enemies and Friday takes him to his own island to be healed, but Friday's tribe disown him, and force Crusoe and Friday to fight to the death. Just as Friday is about to kill Crusoe (who refuses to kill Friday), a slaver ship arrives and kills Friday before enslaving his tribe and razing their village. Crusoe then returns to England and Mary.

Thus while the film has characters named Crusoe and Friday, and tells the adventures of Crusoe after a shipwreck until his rescue, it does not tell Defoe's story at all. Partly this is modern political correctness in the portrayal of Friday and inversion of the Christian morality of the original.