MOTHER LODE
US, 1982, 101 minutes, Colour.
Charlton Heston, Nick Mancuso, Kim Basinger, John Marley.
Directed by Charlton Heston, Fraser Clarke Heston.
One of Charlton Heston's last major starring roles. After thirty years in the cinema, he moved in the early 1980s to the stage and to television.
This film was written by his son Fraser Clark Heston. It is set in British Columbia and has magnificent Canadian scenery. It is a story about lust for gold - but also turns into a variation on the Baby Jane, Sweet Charlotte genre with Heston as a madman. An entertaining, but in no way memorable, film.
1. Action entertainment? The remote scenery and locations for a lust for gold story? Obsession? Violence?
2. The use of the Canadian locations, rugged and majestic beauty, aerial photography? An atmosphere for prospecting, gold fever? Interior life, the obsessions, madness? Musical score?
3. The title and the focus on the gold - reality and illusion, vision? quest for the Mother lode? His madness, his death? Jean and his obsession, the false discovery The ironic truth at the end?
4. Charlton Heston as the Mc Gee brothers? His stature, ruggedness and patriarchal style. Scots accent? Silas - the initial encounter? Jean and his stories, the work in the mine, his deception, the growing menace and violence, his plans, his lies, the ultimate confrontation with Jean, the desperate fight and his death? Ian Magee as Silas? victims, hidden, frightening Andrea, killed by Jean? A sad picture of gold prospectors and their destruction?
5. Jean and Andrea, the search for their friend, Jean selling his house, the old plane, the flight, the dangers, the exhilaration, the crash landing, the plane's sinking? The encounter with Elijah and discussing mining with him, his wisdom, prospects? His helping fix the plane? The landing, the search, the encounter with Silas Mc Gee, looking through the shafts, the exhilaration, the danger, Jean's growing obsession, the time in the shafts, his discovery of the fake shaft, the explosion, his thinking he had killed Silas and Andrea, his discovering them both, the killing of Ian, his obsessiveness, the endurance that he went through to get the mother lode, the final explosion, the flood and the revelation of the gold, the reconciliation with Andrea and their return? Andrea and her support, her being frightened, her strength, Silas kidnapping her, the ultimate fight? A portrait of ordinary people being caught up in the gold rush mentality?
6. Elijah as the wise old man, the man of the river, Indian wife, his helping with the plane, the gift of the salmon, his coming up-river, his understanding the Mc Gees, his observations on Jean?
7. The film's detail of the mines, the false gold, the floods, the true mother Lode? The myth of easy riches in gold
rushes?
8. Themes of madness and cruelty, Silas and his brother and the obsession, long, mutual destruction? The possibility for Jean to become like them?
9. Entertaining action, psychological drama, a vehicle for Charlton Heston?
