Hello again all! I know what you're thinking. "Two posts in one week, is this guy on amphetamines?" or most likely "Hey, I should really click on that porn right about now." But, yes, I have returned since I'm getting the writing juices flowing for my grad school applications. Yeah, this is pretty much a procrastination measure now but, hey, more posts!
For this column, I'm going to look into a genre that hasn't been getting that much love and what doesn't get enough love as the Western? Who needs cowboys nowadays when you can have cowboys in space? These columns will mostly be about an obscure or an underrated genre and the films that should be your jumping points. The Post-Modern Western is a fascinating case study because you have a genre that, in a way, has really created many innovations later adopted by other films and, well, has effectively taken over the entire Western genre from the early 90's and on.
The Post-Modern Western's origins are dubious. Some say it began with "High Noon," a Western film disguised as a critique of the Hollywood Communist blacklist but most others agree it began with Sam Peckinpah's classic "The Wild Bunch." Up until "The Wild Bunch," there could be no doubt that the genre was all about black and white. "The Wild Bunch" introduced another color to the palate: grey. And lots of it. This is not a film about heroes. In fact, the film focus is on a band of outlaws that will and do kill anyone that gets in their way. Or just for no damn reaosn. It also brought a whole new meaning to the term "film violence." When the opening shoot-out has dozens of innocent people killed in the crossfire between two rival gangs within a matter of minutes, you know you're not seeing "The Sound of Music" (though Peckinpah did make a weird comedy/western/musical later on but that's for another time). If you want to watch some truly breathtaking sequences in modern film history, look no further than the beginning and the end gunfights. There really hasn't been anything made since that can really match the epicness of these gun battles. Okay, maybe "Saving Private Ryan" but, come on, it's bloody Normandy.
Sam Peckinpah continued making violent, violent movies after that (i.e. "Straw Dogs" was rated NC-17 for how realistic the violence was by 1970's standards) but it took Sergio Leone to really define what this genre could do. Honestly, when you need a bunch of gratuitous violence, you got to go with the Italians. Although best known for his "Man with No Name" trilogy starring Clint Eastwood as the namesake character, one of his best works "Once Upon A Time in the West" tends to go a little darker than others.
Leone tended to work with black and white more often than Peckinpah. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" is a perfect example of this. In most of his Westerns, a mysterious protagonist, at first considered a possible sinister force, turns out to have a heart of gold. Either Clint Eastwood carrying his six shooter with the ease of a truly unrepentant killer or James Coburn hurling nitroglycerin for kicks, they are always feared by those around them. In a way, they end up being windows into the sinister world that surrounds them. "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" it's the Civil War and "Once Upon A Time in the West" is, well, the West. It's a pretty bleak world where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and evil has free reign. Casting Henry Fonda was a coup for this film. At the time, Fonda was considered the nicest guy in Hollywood much like how the Western was considered a shiny, nostalgic look back at the West. The sort of West where men became men and where anyone could get rich by just having enough pluck. By twisting him, Leone's commentary on what the West becomes crystal clear. Nice on the outside, evil on the inside.
One of Leone's main men, Clint Eastwood became the champion of the Western when he began to bridge his career into directing. Though the Western itself started to peter out in the 70's, Eastwood continued to make them in a variety of forms. You could see Leone's influence on the screen with each of his films. Eastwood's "Unforgiven" rejuvinated the genre after it was long thought dead. It's a slow burn of a film, which feels at times a mixture of Leone and Peckinpah, but it reflects on a world that Leone began building with "Once Upon A Time in the West." Here a clearly aged "Man With No Name", after hanging up the towel on his days as a killer and tries to raise a family, has to come face to face with his past as he battles with a slew of notorious ner-do-wells.
The violence in this film, much like post-modern Westerns is not supposed to pretty or glorified. You can feel everyone that dies here. Whenever someone gets shot in this film, you aren't rooting for anyone. You just look on in horror to see the pain violence actually causes. It's something Peckinpah was getting at in "The Wild Bunch" but the violence was so over-the-top that you couldn't look away. Here you want to cover your eyes.
After a brief flirtation with Westerns in the early 90's with films like "Tombstone" and "The Quick and the Dead", the genre essentially became dormant yet again after most of them failed at the box office. Recently, it has come back in the smaller, more manageable indie market with brilliant films like "The Proposition" and "The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford." The genre got its pulse reawakened by "Deadwood," a post modern Western show that lived a very short life on HBO. Nevertheless, it inspired every film in its genre since. The West has become a place where everything is dirty both literally and metaphorically. Or, more precisely, what the West actually was historically.
No doubt inspired by Cormac McCarthy's indelible, incredible, and intensely brutal book "Blood Meridian", "The Proposition" brings the West a little further to the outlands of Australia. As a commentary on civilization and the brutality of man, it isn't a pretty film to watch. Flies buzz around in almost every scene, a cop accidently blow off his toes, etc. The buildings look shoddily built as if "The Road Warrior" traveled back in time to Victorian England. Even a "civilized" dinner scene, is broken up with shots of how disgusting the food is they are about to enjoy. When the actual brutality starts in this film, you can feel your nails claw into the armrests of your chair. By the end, the people are just as ugly inside as the environment they live in.
"The Assassination..." (yeah, the title was way too damn long for its own good) relishes in the beauty of the West in stark contrast with its brutality. Every shot in the film is breathtakingly beautiful. Then the violence happens. As opposed to most other post-modern Westerns, it doesn't relish in violence. It happens and then it's gone. The ending acts as a meta-commentary about the genre in a way as people become fascinated with the murder of Jesse James (no yelling spoilers here people, it's in the bloody title) and Robert Ford puts on shows about it. In a way, we remember the violence the most in these films, but this film tries to bring back the human side to it all.
These films are not about humanity, though. They're about the people that lose it all. It shows how humans try to cling to what little humanity they have left in such a chaotic world that they still end up losing it in the process. With today's fascination with post apocalyptic stories, I'm surprised the post-modern Western hasn't caught on even though they're clearly inspired by much of the imagery and themes of these films. They are possibly the only pre-post-apocalyptic films around.
I am, as always, obediently yours
-Brett
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