MovieChat Forums > Dante's Peak (1997) Discussion > Regarding Paul's Fate

Regarding Paul's Fate

posted 13 years ago by titanic-kid
19 replies | jump to latest

I've seen the movie countless times since i was a kid and enjoy it everytime now still, even the DVD.
Here is my question regarding the scene where we lose Paul to the Lahar near the end. The car gets stuck at the end of the bridge which breaks away and flips over before Paul could jump off to safety. We pressume he is killed in the rapid Lahar.... but i've always wondered if he "just" may have surrvived it some time in the period of the film that doesn't become neccesary. Like in between the last big blow out of the volcano and the film's finale.
Maybe Paul could have been pulled out by salvagers. It's not entirley impossible so long as the man manged to keep out of the way of floating ruble and be pulled out before the Lahar sets when it stops flowing. It might be just me but it could work.
I know if i could have work on the film i would have gone for that because he was an interesting character and a genuine nice guy who can be at the best of times stubborn but knew his job.
What is anyone else opinion of this?

[–] puirt-a-beul 12 years ago

Firstly, kid, thanks for helping me learn a new word! I didn't know what lahar was (well, I knew what it was, I just didn't know the word for it), so I had to look it up.

A couple of thoughts I have on what you suggest:

It wasn't really a lahar he fell into - it was a river, massively swollen with flash-melted snow and ice and a huge volume of broken trees and accumulated debris. As I understand it from my reading, a lahar is a kind of heavy fast-moving slurry made mostly from wet volcanic ash, and you can't swim in it or even float. It overwhelms you, drags you down and suffocates you.

So if it had been a lahar he'd been swept into, there's no way he would have survived. But I doubt the river would have given him any better chances - it was violently turbulent and full of massive objects moving rapidly and chaotically, with huge kinetic energy. He would have been pulped before he even had the chance to drown.

No survival for Paul, I'm sorry to say.

You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

[–] jporter-6 10 years ago

Good answer. Flowing water is just so devil-shly destructive. I live in a desert city that occasionally receives heavy rains. A six-inch high flow of water can knock your car off the road. In news coverage, we have seen physically-fit, well-trained fire fighters get swept off their feet when the water is about ankle deep. Thank God the fire fighters have safety lines.

[–] Tsavo 8 years ago

"It wasn't really a lahar he fell into - it was a river, massively swollen with flash-melted snow and ice and a huge volume of broken trees and accumulated debris."

... Also known as a lahar, which is exactly what it was.

"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"

[–] puirt-a-beul 8 years ago

Nope. A lahar is a stream of debris geenrated anew by the volcano. It can flow down trails, streets of a village, or clearings in the underbrush. This was a river that already existed -- hence the bridge -- that had been clogged with debris, from the look of it mostly blasted vegetation and rubble from destroyed buildings.

You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

[–] Tsavo 8 years ago

As I said, the lahar was following the river. Lahars, like Pyroclastic flows, follow the path of least resistance, so it traveled along the river, as the lahars the came from Mount Saint Helens did,until it hit the dam, over stressing and destroying it, then surging from there. But it was a lahar, the film itself made a point of showing the glacial melt that created it.

"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"

[–] puirt-a-beul 8 years ago

No, you're missing the point. What Paul fell into was the river, swollen with debris. As I said, hence the bridge. In this case, the lahar(s) had flowed into the river, but on its own, a lahar is a different thing.

You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.

[–] Tsavo 8 years ago

No, I'm afraid it's you who does not understand. You are attempting to separate the river from the lahar in your argument. But a lahar is not just wet ash, it is usually the result of snow and glacial melt caused by the eruption, and whatever else it picks up on the way. They can also result from pyroclastic deposits falling into rivers. Ash, snow, ice, water, any an all of it mixes together to create a lethal combination. If lahars overwhelm rivers, as they often do, they don't stop being lahars, they just travel along the river, which only adds to said lahar. Any volcanologist will tell you this. When the lahars caused by Mount Saint Helens overwhelmed the Toutle, and other surrounding rivers, they did not stop calling them lahars (or volcanic mudflows, as the media often called them) at any point.

"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"

[–] Tsavo 8 years ago

Specifically, the lahar was following the river, much the same as the lahars that Mount Saint Helens produced, which this movie not-so-subtly took inspiration.

"From a phylogenetic perspective, we are all fish!"

[–] Vibradiant 12 years ago

Everything the first respondent said.

The reason so few people survive floods and tsunamis is the debris factor. Unless he was dressed in an unusually buoyant titanium cage, he was bouncing off whole trees, giant boulders, and possibly bits of bridge for an indeterminately lengthy ride down that freakishly swollen river.

Add to that the fact that the torrent was mostly melting snow and ice, and Paul was destined to be a tenderized cold cut in very short order.

"I like to watch" Chauncey Gardiner, 'Being There'

[–] jporter-6 12 years ago

I like your respect for Paul. I, too, think that he was a man who applied his integrity and principles to his job. And he admitted to Dalton that he was wrong.

However, and this is what I hate, by the time they got to actually digging out Dalton, Rachel and the children, it was at least six or seven days. (The "couple of days" the technician the saw the light blinking. At least two or three days to get equipment and manpower to the mineshaft, another couple or three days to dig them out.)

Dalton walked out of the mine to the USGS and asked, "Where's Harry?"
The response was that Paul didn't make it, but at least he got to see God's
big show..

If--sigh--Harry had survived, they likely would have known by that time--
several days later.

Sorry.

[–] psdhart 11 years ago

I, too, think that he was a man who applied his integrity and principles to his job. And he admitted to Dalton that he was wrong.

me too

[–] vestdennis 10 years ago

No way Paul survives a river of lava, debris, molten hot ashes, etc. He would have been swept under and if not drowned (most likely) he would have died from the molten water, debris would choke him to death.

[–] nutsberryfarm 10 years ago

yeah, he's not that tough.

'I'm not making art, I'm making sushi.'-Masaharu Morimoto

[–] haruuj 11 years ago

Paul screams exactly like Wilhelm when he dies.

[–] Mr_Blonde3 11 years ago

I didn't like the fact that he died. I like Hallahan ever since seeing him in "The Thing". I thought his calls were perfectly ordinary for the situation, he apologized for his error, and went into damage control mode when he found out he was wrong.

I love to love my Lisa.

[–] soundwave86 10 years ago

His death was almost a significantly emotional scene, until they dubbed the Wilhelm scream in when he fell in the water.

[–] HombreOfAnotherEra 10 years ago

Also Charles Hallahan died not long after the film was made. So if they had a second chance to film Paul Dreyfus survive (in post production), sorry not possible!

[–] titanic-kid 10 years ago

Well i'd like to thank everyone who posted a reply and helped clear some ideas.
Guess we'll never know if one could survive such a fete until we're put to that test.....hopefully not gonna happen.

[–] manofsteel4455 8 years ago

You're reaching,OP.