Proteus is an historical drama, shot directly on video in the style of many past PBS specials, more comparable in experience to theatre than film. In the wrong hands stiff and self-conscious, in the right ones understated and dynamic. Filmmakers John Greyson and Jack Lewis have found in actual records of incidents emerging from Robben Island, a penal colony of Cape Town, South Africa, intriguing metaphors (or barometers) for the politics of masculinity that suffused Amsterdam and South Africa in 1725. What makes Proteus ingenious, is how easily it applies to contemporary culture. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, it says more about the community than the accused. Informs by the questions it raises in the audience’s minds. Questions the characters never ask. A possible theme of Proteus might be grotesque consequences of the unspoken: particular acts that are untranslatable in Christian society. Professions of love that even the subtitles refuse to transmit in English.
Proteus opens with a trio of stenographers taking dictation, dressed in attire that I think must place them somewhere between the 1950’s and 60’s. They are struggling to translate phrases without using terms that sound “too contemporary.“ It is not until the end of the film that Greyson and Lewis reveal them as court reporters in the sodomy trial of Claas Blank (Rouxnet Brow) and Rijkhaart Jacobsz (Neil Sandilands). I confess I’ve never seen a device quite like this, radios and relatively modern attire turning up amongst colonials, and no one batting an eye. But when you consider the situation: people behaving in ways inconsistent with the sophisticated reasoning available to them, clinging to the trappings of provincialism while taking enlightenment for granted (or ignoring it altogether) it fits.
The film is filled with frank improbabilities, an African man named Blank, a prisoner flogged to death for stealing penguin eggs, male lovers dealing in horse-imagery (“Today I will be the cinnamon mare.”) a tobacco pouch made from a woman’s mammary. What makes these bizarre incidents useful, is that in a world where the “crime” of same-gender sexual attachment has less to do with activity than with protocol and caste, they make perfect sense; without losing their obvious absurdity. Claas and Rijkhaart are executed for their behavior while the botanist who employs them, Virgil Niven (Shaun Smyth) is never made accountable in a court of law.Proteus spends a great deal of time exploring language and the nature of truth. An officer is sacked for interpreting orders inappropriately, even though it is a discretionary blunder. Claas distorts language and folklore to curry favor with Niven. Niven names the strange flower by extrapolating from the same myth. As previously mentioned any words used to denote man-to-man sex is biblical and pejorative at best. Even Claas and Rijkhaart have trouble discussing it. And if either one of them declares his love aloud, it is literally lost in translation. Confession is worse than denial. In the sad, twisted world of Proteus, it is worse to express love for another man than to talk about sex between men. It’s worse that Rijkhaart was penetrated by a black man.
The number of films that turn on personal agenda and conflicting versions of reality are numerous (Rashomon, The Lady in Question, Bad Education, Go! ) but this is something else entirely. Like Molina and Valentin in Kiss of the Spider Woman, Blank and Jacobsz keep positing different viewpoints until they find mutual terrain. Claas earns redemption by admitting homoerotic behavior and in doing so, elicits his own execution. If this sounds like a B-Movie just waiting to happen, somehow Greyson and Lewis avoid it. The riveting content supercedes the plot. And it doesn’t have the famished, pedestrian look of many video-dramas. The cinematography goes way beyond aesthetic cloying to imbue shots with vibrance and meaning.
Virgil Niven the botanist eventually names the exotic, tropical flower Proteus, for the shape-shifting Greek sea god. At first Claas doesn’t get the connection, but the audience understands only too well. We all know that sex between guys is a fact of life, whether it’s between privileged-class white men in the wharf district of Amsterdam, racially divided prisoners, sailors or circle jerk buddies at summer camp. Proteus is about transforming experience by altering language, removing stigma by shifting connotation. It’s almost too easy to go back to Robert Anderson’s Tea and Sympathy, where the heroine tells her husband he persecutes a sensitive student for what he fears most in himself. Almost 50 years later and “it still is news.“ Whether they want to admit it or not, most men, however they identify, know where to find gay-sex when they want it. And know that discretion will spare them the consequences of civilization’s homophobic mass hysteria.