Rafelson collaborated with William Harrison to adapt Harrison's novel Burton and Speke for the screen. The book was published in 1982, but reportedly since the 1960s Rafelson had been interested in the true story it was based on, the 1857 expedition undertaken by famed Victorian explorer Richard Burton and aristocratic amateur John Hanning Speke to find the long-sought source of the Nile River. Mountains of the Moon refers to legendary topography falsely mapped by cartographers for centuries as the region where the Nile started. It wasn't until Burton and Speke's journey that the actual location was discovered.
From this background, Rafelson and Harrison fashioned a tale that gives as much weight to drama of the relationship between the two men as to the stunning scenery through which they move. The two men had vastly different personalities, at least in Harrison's original conception of the characters, with Speke seen as bigoted and repressed, stupid and incompetent in his partner's eyes, and Burton portrayed as more interested in hanging with the natives than the task at hand. According to some sources, dramatic liberties were taken in the depiction of each man's nature (and Rafelson was criticized for suggesting Speke's latent homosexuality was the cause of his uptight bearing), but the story sticks fairly closely to the events that brought these two explorers together, their tentative friendship dissolving into animosity over their clashing personalities and finally bitter rivalry when Speke, venturing out alone while Burton suffered from malaria, took full credit for discovering the Nile's source in Lake Victoria.
Dublin-born actor Patrick Bergin, best known to American audiences as Robin Hood (1991) and as Julia Roberts' menacing husband in Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), had his first major feature role as Burton. Iain Glen (Gorillas in the Mist, 1988; Jorah Mormont in the TV series Game of Thrones) won the Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor for his work here and in two other films from the same year. Other familiar faces in the cast include Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I, 1987; the TV series Girls), Fiona Shaw (My Left Foot, 1989; Harry Potter's Aunt Petunia in several entries in that film series), and Delroy Lindo (Malcolm X, 1992; Gone in Sixty Seconds, 2000).
The film was shot by Roger Deakins, one of the most respected cinematographers in the industry and a ten-time Academy Award nominee for such films as Fargo (1996), No Country for Old Men (2007)--two of the 11 films he's made with the Coen brothers--and Prisoners (2013). The picture was shot on location in Kenya and England.
In real life, Burton and Speke were rather colorful characters. Burton had a keen interest in sexuality, particularly as practiced by the various tribes and people he encountered on his explorations. He formed the Kama Shastra Society as a way to publish explicit material then banned by Great Britain's Obscene Publications Act of 1857, among them The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (commonly called The Arabian Nights) and a translation of the Kama Sutra, an ancient Hindu text on sexual practices. Speke, known for propounding the theory that certain Africans were descended from Ham, the "cursed" son of Noah, died of a gunshot wound the day before he and Burton were to have publicly debated Speke's claim that he had discovered the Nile source. The death was officially ruled an accident and long considered a suicide, but many have doubted that conclusion.
Mountains of the Moon was a marked departure from Rafelson's usual subject matter, focusing on far less epic, intimate contemporary stories, although his attention to the personal connection between the two men mirrors his relationship-centered dramas such as The King of Marvin Gardens (1972) and Blood and Wine (1996).
Director: Bob Rafelson
Producer: Daniel Melnick
Screenplay: William Harrison, Bob Rafelson, based on Harrison's book Burton and Speke
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Editing: Thom Noble
Art Direction: Maurice Fowler, Fred Hole
Original Music: Michael Small
Cast: Patrick Bergin (Burton), Iain Glen (Speke), Fiona Shaw (Isabel), Richard E. Grant (Larry Oliphant), Delroy Lindo (Mabruki)
By Rob Nixon
Read more about Bob Rafelson's life and career:
Roger Ebert's 4-star review of Mountains of the Moon (1990), airing on TCM on October 17, 2014
Peter Tonguette, "Bob Rafelson and His Odd American Places"
