The Problem of Voice in Captain Pantoja and the Special Service

Francisco Lombardi's film adaptation of Mario Vargas Llosa's novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service fails to realize, or interestingly re imagine, the crucial aesthetic/formal treatment of voice in the novel. The novel is heteroglossic and, through its inclusion of multiple styles (military reports, telescopic dialogue, epistolary, and more) it achieves what Robert Stam would refer to as "multi-trackness". Stam uses this term in his essay to differentiate between novels and film--the novel has one plain whereas film can place its different tracks (sound,visual,etc.) in dialogue with each other. However, within Llosa's novel, different perspectives disjoint and coalesce the narrative giving it a richness of voices and views. Lombardi's film does not do this. This scenario is a reversal of Stam's theoretical frame. In this case the novel not the film makes use of multi-trackness. The only attempt at mimicking the novel's use of voice is a voice-over track wherein Pantoja reads military reports he has written. As Michael Chanan points out in his introduction to Memories of Underdevelopment a voice-over narration as a replacement of first person narration is hardly interchangeable. It fails to achieve the closeness to the character and source. In essence the adaptation fails because, beyond this voice-over, it makes no attempt to capture or adapt the skill and intrigue of the experimentation with multiple voices.

The success of the humor in Mario Vargas Llosa's novel Captain Pantoja and the Special Service is directly related to the disunion between the subjects discussed (primarily the discussion of prostitution and sexuality) and the tone of the language the characters use to relate to these subjects. Specifically, the language used by the novel's protagonist Captain Pantoja in his military dispatches on or relating to the establishment of a Special Service of prostitutes. The language of the military is based on numbers, facts, planning, clarity, and politeness. Pantoja's dispatches to his commanding officers--presented in the novel in an epistolary style--demonstrate the hilarious inability for military language to comprehend or examine sexuality. The most clear example is Pantoja's detailed research and description of the establishment of the Special Service. His various investigations (all presented in the crisp language of the military) accounts for the logistics of a bordello, the amount of soldiers/services required, but completely forgets about the menstruation of the prostitutes in the army's employ. This disunion is mirrored elsewhere in the novel. The telescopic dialogue cuts back and forth between different scenes, the setting of the city vs. the setting of the jungle, all parallel the disunion of the language. Llosa's skill lies in being able to make this impossible reconciliation hilarious and not tragic.