There are elements of story that will always point to one specific genre into which the story fits, despite most stories fitting into multiple genres. Consider, for example, a little known Sean Connery film: Outland. Despite its obvious Sci-Fi surface story, it is also a "western" in the sense that Connery plays a "marshall" in a "frontier town" who has to run off or kill the "bad guys." Another example: The Man Who Would Be King, which fits nicely into period colonial piece not unlike Zulu, while still meeting all of the requirements for an adventure story.
In contrast, Appaloosa is purely a western, a REAL western--if one can use that term with impugnity. There are clearly BAD guys and GOOD guys. One of the good guys appears to see things with just that sort of clarity of distinction, while the other has too much "feeling" to be truly, unequivocally good (in fact, he admits at one point to having killed outside the law); and we suspect that side of him from the beginning. The bad guys are indeed truly bad, from their bad fashion through their bad behavior and bad speech all the way to their bad teeth. The environment is dusty, windy, dry . . . unforgiving. Interestingly, the two most prominent women in the story--a widow from St. Louis and a local whore--end with character that is the opposite of their characters.
This is my immediate (in the literal sense of the word: little or no mediation, meditative reflection) reaction to the movie. I will see it again. It is one of those kinds of films.
monday work-tunes
9 years ago
Are westerns making a comeback? '3:10 to Yuma' and 'Seraphim Falls' seem to indicate that they can attract big names.
ReplyDeleteSeraphim Falls was an interesting film; a little too surreal in places, but a well made film exploring the revenge/chase theme. The remake of 3:10 to Yuma was, in my opinion, nothing more than a time filler; I walked away from the film with nothing. It ended and my thoughts about it ended. Kostner's Open Range was stunning, another real western, though some think it took long by half. Silverado, of course, was the postmodern western, playing at being a serious western while pulling out all of the stops with every cliche and hackneyed western metaphor. It was great, but for completely different reasons.
ReplyDeleteThe western, as a genre, is capable of exploring virtually any theme one could imagine and still remain true to the attributes which make it a "western." Consider the various adaptations of Red Harvest. Despite starting life as a "gangster" story and then being selectively edited and retold as a Samurai story, Leone made it "work" as a western. Even the more recent retelling (as Last Man Standing), despite going back to the "gangster" roots of the story, sets it and tells it as a western.
Interestingly, the period of time in which the classic western is set was a VERY short period of time, running from the end of the Civil War up to the completion of the transcontinental railway. What is it about that short time, overlapping maybe two generations, that it so attracts those of us enamored of "the western"? What, in the intersections of that time and our own, produce the western genre and keep it going as a forum for telling stories?