Typically, I like to walk people through the thematic meaning and machinations of a movie then use evidence from the filmmaker to help confirm my interpretation. But, for Sorcerer, I thought it would be fun to do the reverse. Let’s start you off with the context, then, with that in mind, explore how the picture goes about setting up and paying off on its thematic intent.
All you need to know about Sorcerer’s themes comes from two William Friedkin interviews.
In 2002, talking to the website Moviehole, Friedkin explained: The Sorcerer is an evil wizard, and, in this case, the evil wizard is fate. The fact that somebody can walk out of their front door and a hurricane can take them away, an earthquake or something falling through the roof. And the idea that we don’t really have control over our own fates, neither our births nor our deaths, it’s something that has haunted me since I was intelligent enough to contemplate something like that.
In a book, published in 1990, by Thomas D. Claggett, called William Friedkin: Films of Aberration, Obsession, and Reality: “The title Sorcerer occurred to me to represent several things,” Friedkin said. “Each character was a kind of evil wizard, a specialist. One with explosives, another a wheel man, another is a manipulator of people, and the fourth is a trigger man. Then the sorcerer, really, was fate. The concept of this film was that no matter what people do to try to control their lives, even under the most difficult and impossible circumstances, they still lose out in the end. But this is also a film about betrayal. So many of the most profound experiences I’ve had have ended on a note of betrayal”—he chuckled— “or have resulted in my feeling that no matter what you do, kings don’t mean a thing. But fate was the sorcerer. I thought that would be a concept that would be easy enough for people to absorb it.
Sorcerer Explained
Running From Consequences
We’ve established that Sorcerer is about fate. So how does Friedkin go about that discussion?
In the prologue, we meet four characters— Nilo, Kassem, Victor, and Jackie. Each does something that causes them to run from the consequences.
- Nilo: Carries out an assassination.
- Kassem: Part of a terrorist bombing in Jerusalem.
- Victor: Committed high-level corporate fraud (that caused his brother-in-law to commit suicide) that he’s about to be arrested for.
- Jackie: Gangster who robs a high-stakes, illegal bingo game (with a priest shot in the process) and earns the ire of Mafia bigwig Carlo Ricci.
In short, they’re all criminals. What’s the typical fate of someone who commits a crime? Justice. By running away from their situations, running all the way to South America, to the impoverished town of Porvenir, they seek to evade justice. By proxy, they’ve attempted to evade fate. Remember, visual art often relies on metaphor to convey big ideas. There’s “the thing” as it appears, then the broader idea it’s often associated with and thus can represent. The simplistic expression of this can be found in well-established tropes. A watch is “the thing”, and it’s associated with time.
Imagine a painting where someone’s sitting on a couch, staring at their smartphone, and the room around them is filled with broken clocks. Realistically, the broken clocks make no sense. Thematically, they convey a sense of time lost—in the context of someone staring at their phone. The painting’s implied metaphor is that smartphones are a timesink.
In a painting, all the information exists simultaneously. In a movie, it exists between the first frame and the last. Sorcerer’s equivalent to the “person on the couch, staring at their smartphone” is the four main characters fleeing from the consequences of their actions. And its parallel to the “broken clocks” is that the four main characters all die. Death is the ultimate consequence. Run as far and as long as you want—it will find you. That’s the fate of all living things.
An Opportunity To Start Again
“Part II: Life in Porvenir” picks up with the four characters struggling to live in a destitute South American village. They’ve taken on new identities. For example, Jackie has the ID of a “Juan Dominguez”. Victor is Serrano. Etc. But, despite being “different” people, their existence in Porvenir is a byproduct of their past lives. A change of scenery, a change of name, hasn’t freed them from what they’ve done. They feel the weight of who they were.
But then the opportunity comes. An American oil company needs four men to transport boxes of unstable dynamite, over 200 miles, knowing the slightest tremor could detonate the nitroglycerine, to the site of a burning oil well. The risk is so great, practically a suicide mission, that the oil company agrees give whoever completes the journey $10,000 each, a fresh ID, and travel accommodations. In other words: an actual new life.
Fun fact, do you know what the word “porvenir” translates to? Future. Porvenir, in the film, functions as both a promise and purgatory. Its remoteness makes it a haven for those seeking to disappear from the rest of the world, which is why it’s become a magnet for people like our protagonists and the former Nazi, “Marquez”. As long as they’re there, they’re free. Tomorrow is all but guaranteed. But that also means they’re trapped. If Victor or Kassem were to leave, maybe they’d be recognized and arrested. If Jackie were to leave, maybe he’d be recognized and killed.
The company’s offer would allow the men to begin again, outside of Porvenir. The town transforms from a way to protect their future to a chance to change it entirely. To be reborn. Which is, in some ways, a kind of redemption.
While “Part II” introduces this potential for hope, look at how it ends. Marquez is one of the four men who qualify for this opportunity. But Nilo kills him. Plot-wise, Nilo does it because he wants the payout and Marquez was the oldest and easiest to dispatch then replace. Theme-wise, it foreshadows what’s to come. The reason the film has Kassem call Nilo a “Zionist” and a “Jew” is because it completes the implication that Marquez was a Nazi hiding out in South America. Kassem believes Nilo killed Marquez over Marquez’s past (rather than the present opportunity). That signals to the viewer that the remaining drivers will now have to reckon with their own past along the way.
Fate Will Find You
With that in mind, look at how each character dies:
- Victor: Kassem asks Victor about Paris and Victor starts waxing nostalgic. He pulls out the watch given to him by his wife as an anniversary present, then says, “The day she gave me this was the last day I saw her.” A gunshot rings out. A tire blows. The truck plummets off the road, causing the dynamite to explode.
- Kassem: Is in the same truck as Victor.
- Nilo: Shoots three bandits who attacked the truck but one gets him.
- Jackie: Carlo Ricci’s goons get out of a taxi in Porvenir and, its implied, shoot Jackie inside the local bar, as Jackie dances with Agrippa.
Each death has a callback to the prologue.
- Victor: Fled, after his brother-in-law, Pascal, shot himself to avoid the disappointment of his (Pascal’s) father and jail. That was the same day Victor received the watch.
- Kassem: Participated in a bombing.
- Nilo: Surprised a defenseless target and shot them.
- Jackie: His robbery of a bingo game resulted in the shooting of Carlo Ricci’s brother.
That’s fate. As much as the characters ran away from their past, hard as they tried to begin again, the past caught up to them. Victor caused someone to shoot themselves, he dies due to a gunshot. Kassem caused an explosion, he dies in an explosion. Nilo used a gun, he’s struck by a bullet. Jackie and his crew interrupted others living their lives, he’s interrupted finally trying to live his.
Think back to Jackie’s prologue. He’s in a car with three other guys. They distract Jackie, the car crashes. Sorcerer’s “Part III” is an elaboration of that scene. By calling back to the early failure, Jackie has a chance at redemption. Once again, he’s paired up with three other guys. Once again, those three don’t make it. But it’s not Jackie’s fault. He doesn’t crash. He completes the job.
That structure is common in Hollywood, especially in underdog movies. Early on, the character’s in a situation they’re not equipped to overcome. But, over the course of their journey, they learn, grow, and improve, until they face a similar (if not the exact same) scenario. Except, this time, they win. It’s usually a happy ending for the character and a feel-good experience for the audience. The structure’s used in everything from The Land Before Time (fleeing from Sharptooth vs. defeating Sharptooth) to Whiplash (Andrew failing to play “Caravan” vs. his masterful performance).
But Friedkin undercuts Jackie’s victory by having Ricci’s goons, the very people he had left America to avoid, find him. For a few brief minutes, Jackie had hope. He had cash, a passport, opportunity. He believed his future was, finally, in his control. But then fate caught up to him, as it inevitably does.
Friedkin: The concept of this film was that no matter what people do to try to control their lives, even under the most difficult and impossible circumstances, they still lose out in the end.
The journey in the trucks represents our attempt to take control of our lives. And the terrible results of that reinforce Friedkin’s bleak worldview.
A Few More Thoughts
Despite that negativity, there’s a surprising positivity about cultural divides. You have someone from America, from Mexico, from France, and from the Middle East. Alone, they can accomplish nothing. Working together, they have a chance at improving their circumstances. They start to respect one another, maybe even care about one another. Obviously, it didn’t work out. But there’s something to that.
Friedkin commented on this, too, in the same book mentioned above. He talked about watching Clouzot’s original adaptation of The Wages of Fear. Quote, It had a great effect on me and a powerful theme: four men—strangers, enemies—sitting on a load of dynamite together. They have to cooperate, though they hate each other, to survive. That was a metaphor to me for the situation of the world—these different countries need each other. I thought I would take this theme with new characters and a different setting and do my version.
This idea of national reliance does make you think about the relationship between Porvenir and the American oil company. Is the American oil company a benefit to the town? Does it help the town? Is the town better off? Or is the American oil company exploiting the people and the land? Once again, you can see Friedkin’s pessimism creep into the conversation. If it was only the characters, then, maybe, you could argue a positive statement about international relationships. But the subtext of the corporate and social dynamic is a complication that adds depth (and negativity) to the discussion. Is such inequality—a wealthy country taking from a lesser one, a corporation imposing on people—as destined as death?
So Jackie Dies At The End?
Yeah, Jackie’s 100% dead. It’s just left “partially” vague for dramatic effect. Now that I think of it, maybe The Sopranos took some inspiration from Sorcerer?
Cast
- Jackie Scanlon – Roy Scheider
- Nilo – Francisco Rabal
- Victor Manzon/Serrano – Bruno Cremer
- Kassem – Amidou
- Corlette – Ramon Bieri
- Marquez – Karl John
- Blanche – Anne-Marie Deschodt
- Carlos – Friedrich von Ledebur
- Agrippa – Rosario Almontes
- Pascal – Jean-LUc Bideau
- Based on – Le Salaire de la peur by Georges Arnaud
- Written by – Walon Green
- Directed by – William Friedkin
