At a guess, The Island Of Doctor Moreau (1977) is often characterized as a cautionary tale of man attempting to play God, but for me it’s something else: a commentary on the very idea of divinity. But let’s start with the plot.
Ship’s engineer Braddock, survivor of the wreck of the Lady Vain in the Pacific, washes up on a mysterious, lush island. Eventually, he’s discovered and brought to the compound of Dr. Moreau. The servants are misshapen, Moreau’s niece (I think) Maria is beautiful but inhibited, and Montgomery, who provides the firepower backing up Moreau’s authority, is morose.
And Moreau? Domineering in the off-hand manner of a man who needs to be reminded to be domineering, he’s a researcher who cautiously reveals to Braddock his accomplishments and ambitions: to find a way to elevate animals to the level of mankind[1]. But his accomplishments have a limit: he observes that his creations approach the level of humanity, but will slip back to a feral existence after a while. There’s now a group of them, the most important inhabitants of the island, and he has given them a set of Laws: no going on all fours, no shedding of blood, no consumption of flesh.
The punishment for breaking these Laws? Return to The House of Pain, the laboratory in which Moreau transforms the bulls, lions, tigers, and many other species into animal/humans.
Engineer Braddock kills a rogue animal/human who begs him for this mercy after breaking the Law, and in punishment for breaking the Law in turn, Moreau proposes to subject Braddock to the opposite transformation: from man to animal. Crucially, Montgomery objects, and Moreau’s rejoinder is a rifle shot to the back, killing Montgomery. Moreau has unknowingly committed a mistake, and now compounds it by ignoring the security of Montgomery’s body, for while he’s busy with Braddock’s treatment, the servants drag the body from the compound and leave it for the animal/humans to find.
When they gather, Moreau goes out to break up the imminent riot, but one of the animal/humans (perhaps a hyena), utters the pivotal phrase: The Master has broken the Law! For a brief moment, the moral of the story hangs in the balance: who stands outside the Law? Who can break it with impunity?
The answer, it seems, is no one, for the rioters fatally injure Moreau, break into the compound, free the animals still awaiting the uplift treatment, and burn the entire place to the ground. In the melee, many of the animal/humans meet their demise, often by those who they have just freed.
Keeping the hormones under strict control.
Meanwhile, before Moreau is confronted, he has been working to submerge Braddock’s humanity into his animal nature, desperate to rid his acknowledged fellow Master of the humanity which led him to break the Law. Braddock, despite physical transformations, is intransigent, engaging in a tug of wills with Moreau even as his own intellect is impaired. When Moreau is distracted by the murderous mob, Maria, who has fallen for Braddock, releases him and, as the compound goes up in flames, escape it and make their way to the repaired lifeboat of Lady Vain.
In a final reminder of the old ways, a survivor, perhaps the survivor, of the animal/humans attempts to stop their escape, but after a prolonged struggle, he is killed in a manner most ghastly, and Braddock and Maria are eventually saved.
One of the most important facets of religion is the rules it proffers to its followers, rules which supposedly make them good with God. Do these rules apply to the Rule Giver? This can be answered either Yes or No.
Yes implies that even God itself is subject to greater forces than itself, thus negating the Godly attribute. This leads to issues of doubt of existence (always a problem for those in power because of their religion, since it becomes a threat to their power). Those who accept that God must have limitations must then contend with issues of cognitive dissonance, and the entire bending of the force of reason. This leaves them somewhat unstable, does it not?
No suggests that the Law can be ignored at least under certain circumstances. Any rule exists because there is an immediate lure of illicit advantage that comes in breaking it, long range consequences be damned. This makes the role model inevitable with God, then, an irresistible lure. Priests, preachers, and pastors have all been caught with their fingers in the till, and their penises where they shouldn’t be: God may say No, don’t do this or that, yet God himself is well-known for breaking many of his own laws, at least in the Judeo-Christian traditions. Whether or not they conflate themselves with God, or merely hide behind his carapace, this gives them the right to break those Laws, to the detriment of vulnerable members of society.
The Island of Dr. Moreau illustrates these contretemps, and then destroys them in the fire of their own contradictions. The initial attraction of the movie may come from the exotic thought of transforming animals into humans, but in the end the real significance is in the transformation of humanity from divine-worshiping, to being the divine, to returning to simply being human.
1 I cannot help but wonder if they are the inspiration for Cordwainer Smith’s Underpeople, which are the focus of several stories of intense moral question. Cf. “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell“, “The Dead Lady of Clown Town,” and several others.
