Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, or: Fish 'n Faith, Mothafucka

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (2011)

Directed by Lasse Hallström

***SPOILERS***

Early on in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, it’s clear what type of film we're in for. Harriet (Emily Blunt) and Fred (Ewan McGregor) butt heads for a classic Bringing Up Baby duo that hates each other…but heeeeyyyyy has some chemistry! And if there was any vote of confidence suggesting these two won’t end up together before the credits roll, which would instead make this worst-titled-movie-of-the-year an actual tale of faith and finding one’s true self, it was erased during one of the following all-too-predictable/superbly lame scenes:

• Harriet candidly noting, “I’m just so shy!” at least a half-dozen times in the film’s opening moments, letting you know that she’s shy, she’s shy, she’s so very very shy, and that’s important in stripping her down to be a bumbling fool who falls madly in love with a man after three weeks of dating.

• Fred, despite being an expert, is easily bested by the ever-canny Harriet (I thought she was shy?) over the simple geographical properties of Yemen that could probably be found on Wikipedia.

• Captain Robert Mayers (Tom Mison) landing in a helicopter as Fred confesses he named his switch after Harriet (doesn’t Chetwode-Talbot Beauty just roll off the tongue), creating the will-she-won’t-see scenario that receives, eh, about fifteen solid minutes of surface treatment and comes to round out her character.

• Fred coming home to a delighted wife…who immediately begins to accuse him of adultery before meeting the poor shy girl?

• And finally, Fred realizing that, yes indeed, there’s more to fishing than a budget, and that, “hey whadda ya know you were right Sheikh!” believing you can catch a fish is a legitimate metaphor for believing in God.

It’s just so frustrating that screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (responsible for 2009’s most exploitative and hokey film Slumdog Millionaire) didn’t realize how absurd and contrived his own film was once Fred and Harriet had reached Yemen. He really could have gone a different direction with it...I can see it now:

FADE IN:

INT. NICE ASS KITCHEN - DINNER TIME

SHEIKH sits on one end of an extremely long table and FRED on the opposite, with the trembling, horribly shy HARRIET sitting in between.

SHEIKH

Fred, would you mind leading our dinner with grace?

FRED

Pssh, grace...I came here to catch fish, bitch.

SHEIKH

You mean you don't believe in God?

FRED

(with a cocky and degrading smile)

No, I'm a man of science.

The overhead ceiling lamp dims, somehow only shrouding SHEIKH in darkness. HARRIET begins to whimper and FRED shifts in his seat uncomfortably.

SHEIKH

Shit...now that just don't make no goddamn sense.

FRED

I'm sorry?

SHEIKH

Aren't you a fisherman, Mr. Jones?

FRED

I don't see what this has to do with—

SHEIKH

(raising voice)

I said: are you, or are you not a fisherman, Mr. Jones?

FRED

Yes...yes I am.

SHEIKH

Then you are a man of faith. How many times do you go fishing before you catch a salmon? A few dozen times? Perhaps hundreds? Yet, you persist. You have faith.

SHEIKH stands up quickly, launching his chair back. He crosses his hands across one another, wiggles his fingers, and exclaims:

SHEIKH

Fish 'n Faith Mothafucka!

Man, that really would have hit home the message. Instead we got this boring version where the characters don't throw up a single gang sign the entire film, with Beaufoy choosing to really, really approach this whole fish-n-faith dynamic with an honest attempt at poignancy. I guess we can credit Beaufoy and director Lasse Hallström with trying to integrate multiple facets through this whole weird fish angle they've got going for them, but even those attempts are so facile and manufactured that hey, maybe the fish thing wasn't such a bad idea after all. For as outlandish as the premise is for Salmon Fishing in the Yemen in attempting to restore a man's faith in (not just God, but) humanity through the art of fly fishing, the connecting bits are so thinly drawn and scarcely developed that really nothing holds up together well in the end.

Let's start with the two main aspects Beaufoy uses to connect Fred's faith in humanity with fly fishing: work and romance. Ah yes, the two tangling conflicts of any rom-com. A good portion of this film revolves around Fred and Harriet's work lives, which features the beginning of the end for any romantic angle within the story, but we'll get to that later. For now, the film is mostly focused on capturing the zany and stagnant (yeah, both) pace of working. This is meant to offset the long stretches of sand and beautiful rock art of Yemen, which Fred and Harriet glaze upon like children at the Willy Wonka Factory. Filled with nothing but white hues and Post-It notes, the stuffy, routine atmosphere of work is so wildly and drastically different from working in Yemen that its place in the film is meant to signal Fred's loss of faith. Drowned in paperwork and politics, escaping to the beautiful land of Yemen allows him to free his mind with the infinitely empty space surrounding him.

Now, at the same time, we have Harriet and Fred's personal lives filtering through. Since romance will also be key in reestablishing Fred's faith, the background work will have to be really thorough. Well...I guess not really thorough, but, you know, just not lazy or hackneyed or anything along those lines, because that could really dampen the filmmakers' main motif. Unfortunately this is all Beaufoy knows, so the connecting dots between Fred and Harriet's first meeting are pretty jagged, featuring a multitude of relationship and work troubles important to their backstories in just under fifteen minutes, all so we can go ahead and get this show rolling, already. Harriet falls for a guy she just met and says she'll wait for him while he's at war, which actually turns out to be a nice little opportunity to exploit the horrors of wartime to fuel the central romance, sort of like exploiting the slums of Dubai for crime drama and rapidly flying colorful visuals. For in any other film Robert just might have been killed while on duty, but we all know he's coming back because that wouldn't be good drama, now would it? And Fred is clearly unhappy with his home life, signaled by the disproportionate amount of time he and his wife's problems receive. It seems strange that Fred, who loves Harriet more than she loves him, is portrayed as unhappy and forlorn through his suffocating work life, especially when his main motivation for going to Yemen seems to be his adoration for Harriet. And with Harriet seemingly happy with her job, it creates an innately expansive distance between the work and romantic ties Beaufoy attempts to establish, where all of the motivations heading into Yemen intertwine, but don't carry the same weight for each character.

So these contradictions, which are pretty well implanted by the end of the film's first third, come back to dampen any sense of faith-building for Fred's stint in Yemen. As mentioned before, the long stretches of Yemen's landscape offset Fred's tiny cramped office, which already doesn't do much to build his faith in God or humanity or whatever, but then it's contradicted by Harriet's office receiving a similar long shot, which happens to feature both Fred and Harriet meeting for the first time. This is either ineptitude in accidentally contradicting a scene's establishing motive, or these shots serve two different functions and are solely utilized for beauty. Both being visually beautiful shots, Hallström is fucked either way. If the Yemen shot is meant to offset Fred's stagnant work life, then Harriet's absurdly long hallways not only counteract Fred, but eliminate any sense of passion for one's occupation rebuilding Harriet's faith (which she abandons upon "losing" Robert) through those work elements. If the Yemen shot isn't meant to offset Fred's stagnant work life, then it's just empty beauty, and with Fred coming out of such a breathtaking beauty ready to save the salmon, it would seem that, after all this talk about fish and faith, it would take more than a goddamn sunset to believe in there's good in this crazy, fucked up world.

In addition to it all, the completely useless side "storylines" take away from any chance at building either angle. These subplots are grounded in the bureaucracy of their respective featured occupations, with Patricia (Kristin Scott Thomas) dealing with the rapidly flying images of war and destruction while dealing a buffoon of a prime minister, or with Sheikh's (Amr Waked) closest enemies attempting to assassinate him, but their places within the film are simply used to progress the story. That's too bad because Fred's new career path is meant to signal his reaffirmation of faith, and these silly subplots, along with the pointless moments with text flying across the screen and forays into online chat sessions with the mayor, not only distract, but resolutely detract from Fred's journey in finding his faith.

And while it's easy to just go ahead and point out everything Beaufoy and Hallström manage to fuck up in tying their hazy themes together, the film becomes downright insulting to the trauma of war and Harriet as an individual. For as she deals with the pain of losing a loved one, it's lazily established through a paper-thin romance that reduces her to a bumbling mess, and from there her dilemma expected to hold the same breadth of drama as Fred's complete misplacement in life. After all, Harriet is a woman, and she sits around looking sad about her man while Fred goes on a journey of faith and self-discovery, and Fred's bit is actually established through multiple forms of filmmaking. And in the end, with the whole world watching through the eye of the press, Harriet is forced to choose between the two men dictating her mood swings, while Fred sits back and wonders, "Was my journey through this trite, muddling piece of melodrama all for nothing?" "No it wasn't!" Beaufoy proclaims, as Harriet indeed decides to stay with Fred, reestablishing her faith, restoring Fred's, and making absolutely no fucking sense in the grand scheme of things. The only thing that could have saved this manipulative moment?

EXT. GIANT HOLE IN YEMEN - FISH GAZING HOUR

As Fred looks upon Harriet with a glowing smile, the fish jumps from the water once again, but this time soaring over HARRIET and FRED, making a gleaming rainbow in the water that trails it. FRED laughs as he glances at a beaming SHEIKH, who throws his gang sign up. FRED mimics him, wiggling his fingers harder than ever before.

FRED

(calmly, almost to himself)

Fish 'n Faith, Mothafucka. Fish 'n Faith.