Countryman Rastafari

September 6, 2009

Countryman (1982) is not a film I would recommend. It's plot is contrived, but I wanted to see its representation of Rastafari culture and values. The main character is Countryman, who rescues a young white male and female survivor of a plane crash and hides them from corrupt Jamaican leaders. The plot is not worth spending much time on. The real goal of the film is to portray Countryman and his Rastafari values in a positive light. In the above picture he is smoking ganja and preparing a natural meal for the two survivors, who despite their danger will eat quite well. The film begins with the white woman losing her top and sitting at this meal topless, but Countryman barely looks at her and has perfect sexual control. In fact, there is really nothing for which Countryman could be faulted. He is an amazing athlete, perfectly uncorrupted, and razor sharp.

Countryman is not so much a character as an embodiment of the religious ideal of the Rastafari faith. The movie opens with the Bob Marley song "Natural Mystic", and Countryman illustrates what a perfect natural mystic might look and act like.. to sometimes humorous effect (control of lightning?). From the largest perspective the film captures the important elements of Rastafari belief: natural living, simplicity, dissociation from worldly power, and community life. But from the start it banishes realism for the construction of a Rasta superman. This portrayal of the Rastafari borrows a page from past idealized portrayals of natives. They become people who are perfectly at home in their environment and deeply wise.. although they are not "natives" at all.

While Countryman fails to portray Rastafari culture except in the most idealized form, it does deserve credit for trying to introduce a popular audience to another culture. We find scenes like this:

Jahman (playing himself) gives a lesson to children using an illustrated board. Again the idealization sets in quickly, but we do get a sense for the way Rastafari faith is not just about Bob Marley records, but actually exists in villages and involves education.

An alternative portrayal of Rastafari faith comes in The White Diamond (2004), a documentary by Werner Herzog set in Guyana. As so often in Herzog's work, he appears to find his theme spontaneously. One of the local workers is Rastafari, and his simplicity is used at several key points as a contrast to the educated scientism of his main subject.

In our first meeting of Mark Antony he is sitting back and talking poetically:

That is a beautiful view. It has the sunset and there is the balloon, just floating around, aimlessly. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's just fantastic.

After some more verbal wandering he compares the balloon to a white diamond.. and thus the title! But while Herzog is clearly fascinated with the simple values of Mark Antony, it is impossible to imagine this guy in the role of Countryman. He is not about to run unbelievably fast nor control nature nor be perfect at anything. What we get is something quite a bit more interesting: a realistic if limited portrayal of a Rastafari man.

Many of the same broad characteristics as seen in Countryman come out in Mark Antony:

He knows where to look for medicinal herbs, and subscribes to natural remedies to the exclusion of anything else.

In this hilarious scene we glimpse something of the poverty and simplicity of Mark Antony. He's quite proud of that rooster! Herzog seems to grow fonder of Mark Antony as the film progresses, and by the end he is a countryman.. and one of the best and kindest portrayals of a Rastafari that I have seen.