Tag: Western

El Topo

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

My first encounter with the films of Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky was a complete accident. Stumbling around Bestival on the Isle of Wight as a young and impressionable teenager, I walked into a tent at midnight just as The Holy Mountain (1973) was about to begin. I had absolutely no idea what to make of the movie; all I knew was that I was in the presence of something completely unique and utterly brilliant. The random nature of this encounter felt Jodorowskian in and of itself, a bizarre coincidence that later left a huge filmmaking impression.

The deranged nature of Jodorowky’s films almost invites the viewer to be somewhat under the influence (like I was then, although just rum and not psychedelics!) when watching them. His breakthrough hit, El Topo, is no exception, a bizarre romp through the Mexican desert that shocks and beguiles in equal measure. Filled to the brim with endless rituals, symbols, animals, dwarfs, deformed people and highly mannered performances, it can be a difficult film to interpret. Seen with an open mindset however and El Topo is a highly cathartic experience, an expiation of sin through brutal violence.

Jodorowsky stars at the eponymous hero, a black-clad gunfighter wandering the desert with his naked son (played by Jodorowsky’s own son Brontis Jodorowsky). He is on a mission to defeat four gun masters to become the finest fighter in the land. With just this basic description El Topo sounds like a traditional Western, or at least a Spaghetti Western — violent deconstructions of the genre filmed by Italians directors like Sergio Corbucci or Sergio Leone — yet Jodorowsky has a completely different aim in mind, using the power of the desert’s almost endless plains to investigate the nature of human morality.

El Topo

It’s ultimately a deeply religious film, albeit one that explores ideas of spiritually and faith through extreme violence. El Topo can easily be read, like the star of The Holy Mountain, as a type of Jesus-like figure, especially when he finds himself in a cave filled with outcasts who have become deformed through incest. He even quotes New Testament scripture when he asks “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” right before his hands are shot, forming wounds like that of the stigmata. Both blasphemous yet oddly affecting, it foreshadows the intense exploration of Christianity found in the films of Martin Scorsese, especially The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).

Yet the film cannot easily be interpreted as a one-for-one Christ allegory. As Roger Ebert mentions: “He makes not the slightest attempt to use them so they sort out into a single logical significance.” Unlike the similarly mannered films of Sergei Parajanov, which can probably be interpreted correctly with a degree in Eastern European studies or specialist knowledge of pre-Soviet Ukrainian, Georgian and Armenian culture, Jodorowsky’s films cannot be solved through specialist knowledge as many of the symbols more or less contradict each other. This is the key pleasure of Jodorowsky’s films and what makes them such iconic Midnight Movies. You just simply have to go with the flow, bring your own perspective to what they offer, and enjoy the experience. Intoxicants are optional.

A restoration of El Topo is in selected cinemas across the UK on Friday, January 10th.

The Sisters Brothers

Posted on by victorfraga

Revisionist western movies are nothing new, but there’s something refreshing and invigorating about Jacques Audiard’s new outing – his first since the Palme d’Or-winning Dheepan (2015) and his English-language debut. In the Frenchman’s hands, the quintessentially American genre is given a new sense of humour and resolve. It that owes a lot more to the Coen Brothers than to John Ford.

The action is twofold: on one end, the hitmen Charlie Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix) and Eli Sisters (John C. Reilly) pursue Hermann (Riz Ahmed) across the American West in order to collect a bounty. The film title refers to their ridiculous surname. On the other end, another mercenary, John (Jake Gyllenhaal) establishes a friendship with Hermann in order to catch him off-guard and hand him to the brothers, only to change allegiances later on.

In other hands, this could have been your stereotypical cat-and-mouse flick, with a lot of street standoffs and aerial vistas for the contemplative moments. Instead, Audiard is interested in the duality inherent to each one of his own characters and on the background that serves as the story’s setting. The brothers have a dynamic that brings Cain and Abel to mind: Charlie is a product of the violence of his time and usually resort to extreme means in order to settle his affairs, while Eli is a modern man trapped outside of his time, who dreams of a non-barbaric future.

As for the landscape, the script contrasts the promises of a new society made during the Gold Rush era and the development of American West against the brutality of a civilisation that doesn’t know to to avoid perpetuating the mistakes of the past. The tragedy, it argues, is that, in this world, the dreamers are eaten up by the machinations of progress and even those who play the rules don’t do so with a clean conscience. That it manages to tackle so many heavy and not particularly uplifting topics without being a full-on downer is a major achievement per se..

The Sisters Brothers is very well cast, with every player bringing out their best game to the proceedings. Reilly get the meatiest role. The protagonist rejects all the sound and fury around him, acting as a proxy for the audiences. We are compelled to sympathise with him, even if he doesn’t really deserve it.

Ultimately, the film is a bittersweet and nihilistic take on the Wild West. It questions violence and whether it can be used for noble purposes. It allows for funny moments, reminding us that sometimes it’s worthwhile becoming a byproduct of our chaotic surroundings. At the end of the day, happiness doesn’t necessarily equate to the smoking barrel of a gun. Or does it?

The Sisters Brothers is out in cinemas on Friday, April 5th (2019). On Netflix on Friday, March 12th (2021)

Buffalo Boys

Posted on by victorfraga

This is the story of two brothers Suwo (Yoshi Sudarso ) and Jamar (Ario bayu) and their uncle Arana (Tio Pakusadewo) who left Java in order to live in exile in the US. They fled a brutal massacre carried out by Dutch Captain Van Trach (Reinout Bussemaker) and his soldiers, which culminated in the assassination of their father Sultan Hamza. The action takes place in 1860.

The two men work on the railways and they have learnt the cowboy way of life. In the beginning of the film, we see them win a very realistic fight on board of a speeding train in California. Their uncle informs them that it is finally time to return to their homeland and get the revenge that they have been waiting for their entire lives.

Upon arriving in Indonesia, the trio encounter a country devastated by an authoritarian regime led by Van Trach and his henchmen. Villagers are routinely tortured and executed. There is also a good amount of fighting, and the martial arts scenes are very well-crafted. Yet, I wish there were more fighting and less torture scenes. At times, it reminded me a of Mandingo (Richard Fleischer, 1975). I felt that the exploitation element was a little too prominent.

The narrative arc is quite conventional, and Westerns fans will work that it’s just a question of final before the final duel between the two brother and Captain Van Trach takes place.

Indonesia has produced quite a few martial arts and fight films in the past decade or so, including The Raid (Gareth Evans, 2011) and Headshot (Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto, 2016). The director of Buffalo Boys Mike Wiluan is no stranger to the genre: he was one of the producers of last year’s The Night Comes for Us (Tjahjanto) – a real wild wild ride of a movie. The Thai film Tears of the Black Tiger (Wisit Sasanatieng, 2001) is a fine example of a Western taking place in Asia, balancing action and visuals, Eastern and Western themes, and hitting all the right buttons. Buffalo Boys just about scratches the surface.

Still worth a watch, particularly for the magnificent Indonesian scenery and top-notch acting. Buffalo Boys is out on most VoD platforms from Friday, January 18th.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown

Posted on by victorfraga

The words of American historian Frederick Jackson Turner open The Ballad of Lefty Brown: “The frontier environment is at first too strong for the man. He must accept the conditions which it furnishes or perish.” Whether this usage is an attempt by director Jared Moshé to raise up the sense of importance of his work, by standing on those metaphorical giant shoulders, it poses an immediate and scrutinising challenge. Much akin to Turner’s inference of the inhospitable frontier, the filmmaker is stepping into the western genre, an intimidating cinematic history in which aspiration can perish.

The crotchety Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman) has ridden with Western legend and the newly appointed Senator of Montana Edward Johnson (Peter Fonda) his entire life. Before departing for Washington with wife Laura (Kathy Baker), intent on leaving his loyal friend in charge of the ranch, Johnson is shot dead by a rustler. Following the tragic event, Lefty is reunited with his old friend, US Marshall Tom Harrah (Tommy Flanagan), and together they set off in pursuit of Eddie’s killer; a journey that sees the two men reacquaint themselves with the harsh realities of frontier justice.

“Ballad” is an appropriated word in the context of its usage, yet as with Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue, it casts a certain romance onto the drama. In the context of the western, it perhaps pays tribute to the exploits unfolding against the burgeoning American mythical heartland. The Ballad of Lefty Brown is set at a time when law and order on the frontier were still in their infancy, and a tradition of vigilante or mock-justice had not yet been fully extinguished, which opens the film as Johnson hangs a man. It is a theme that resurfaces more than once, looking to the slow pace of progress, specifically how ideas and here the civilisation of the untamed regions of the US naturally calls on the death of a generational ethos. This period of transition from frontier justice to law and order in Moshé’s drama, whether consciously or not by the filmmaker, is constructed upon the Jungian concept of the confrontation with the shadow complex, which is in fact broadly a feature of the western genre.

In his collected works, Carl Jung addressed the idea of moral authenticity and the infringements of religious moral instruction. The political machinations behind the events of the film’s narrative therein can be read as offering a thought on law and order’s vulnerability to the shadow complex. What is witnessed is the way an individual is able to transform the legal and civilised authority into a faux justice, or another form of frontier justice, only known by a different name. Herein Moshé offers an allegory of a Jungian nature that addresses the need for that confrontation with the shadow complex, and champions morality as not a social construct, but a psychological one. Importantly, the ugliness of frontier justice becomes not just a way of life, but a reflection of man’s freedom to attain moral authenticity.

Outside of the Jungian inclinations, one of the themes that resonates most strongly is the uncomfortable intersection between storytelling and reality, that reopens old wounds for Tom. Spiralling outward from this is the reality versus the romanticisation of heroic acts, amidst the realities of frontier justice that becomes the story arc of a young kid Lefty takes on as a travelling companion. But for Tom, his arc has an inflection of religion, his pursuit of the rustlers his own journey into the desert to be tempted by Satan. In as much as this may be Lefty’s ballad, he becomes the centre point around which characters and the events revolve, the character that leads us on a journey and opens up a world and its people to us.

The western often has us waiting for that next masterpiece; sadly The Ballad of Lefty Brown does not bring that wait to an end. A solid western, it falls into the shadow of the great works of the genre by the heavyweight filmmakers. There is of course no shame here, but thinking of Kevin Costner’s Open Range (2003), the success was revisiting the classic western form, offering nothing new, but trusting in the affection we feel for the genre in all its familiarity. Yet at the same time it stood up to other fine examples of the form. The comparisons between The Ballad of Lefty Brown and other western films, for example Once Upon A Time in the West’s (Sergio Leone, 1968) themes of progress, business and politics, as well as the personal transformation of Frank (Henry Fonda) compared to Montana Governor James Bierce (Jim Caviezel) here, only undermine Moshé’s film in hindsight. One cannot help but consider those opening words of Turner’s as a forewarning of the film’s eventual fate with time.

The Ballad of Lefty Brown is out on DVD and VoD on May 7th.

Western

Posted on by victorfraga

A group of German construction workers are sent to the deep Bulgarian countryside next to the state’s Southern border. All but one of them approach their visit with the preserved hostility of European post-Cold War stereotypes and dynamics. The exception here is Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), a quiet and private middle-aged man who, despite the language barrier, prefers the company of the locals.

The Bulgarians, we soon learn, are no less prejudiced when it comes to newly arrived strangers. Caught in the timeless capsule of their village, the last time the locals remember seeing Germans was during the Nazi occupation of WW2. Despite the contrasting sentiments, a bond is eventually forged. Meinhard befriends one of the locals, Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov), and we witness the formation of a special relationship between two men whose willingness to connect and understand one another defies verbal communication.

In contrast to the harmonious microcosm Meinhard is trying to create, tension gradually builds up everywhere elsewhere in the movie. Eventually, a conflict between “occupiers” and “occupied” occurs, when the Germans and the locals have to share the scarce water in the village.

The film examines a heavily male-populated and patriarchal society, offering some sensitive insight and debunking myths. The macho-men chasing foreign girls on a river bank we see at the beginning are entirely deconstructed in the end of the film. While keeping male experience as central to the world of Western, Grisebach successfully portraits the private worlds and psychological complexities of all characters. Ultimately, no one is as weak or strong as they seem, and there are no vigilantes.

By depriving the film of non-diegetic sound, prioritising individual experiences over script, and casting non-professional actors from (except for a very professional stunt horse), Valeska Grisebach creates a cinematic piece so deeply rooted in realism that it transcends everyday life, in the Bazinian sense. Western is a very European movie. It’s literal and poetic. It accurately portrays the boundary between East and West, and – perhaps most importantly – it demonstrates that no barrier is unsurmountable.

Western was out in cinemas on April 13th. It’s available on all major VoD platforms on July 9th.

Nick Cave, Ennio Morricone and a lot of gunshots!

Posted on by victorfraga

Cinematic stereotypes, narratives and iconographies remain in filmmakers’ consciousness leading a deconstruct or reworking of the tropes that made a genre so influential. This is true of both Neo-Noir and Neorealism. No exemption to this statement, the Western is a genre continually revised by contemporary film creatives. In recent years, Slow West (John MacLean, 2015), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Andrew Dominik, 2007) and Sweet Country (Warwick Thornton, 2017) have all reshaped the themes of the genre to their contemporary socio-political and geopolitical issues, none more so than the latter.

All of these films build upon the enduring legacy created by the maverick Italian director Sergio Leone, often described as the King of Spaghetti Western. In particular, though separated by 51 years, Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie, 2016, pictured below) uniquely works inside and outside the filmic and musical framework assembled in For a Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965; pictured above and at the bottom of this article). Crafted by masterful musicians in Ennio Morricone’s 1960’s score and Nick Cave’s recent collaboration with Warren Ellis, when studying the intertwining nature of character, setting and ambience, it is indisputable to not see the links between this Neo-Western and its predecessor.

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Music is the spaghetti of the soul

Crafting a new template for further neo-Westerns to abide by or reconstruct, Leone in A Fistful of Dollars (1964) built upon the legacy of John Ford et al – heightened by his acute Italian sensibility of style and atmosphere. The director and composer Ennio Morricone in For a Few Dollars More produced a film with deeper musical roots to its characters, alongside eclipsing the visceral cinematic imagery and budget of Fistful. Resulting in an opening credit that imbues the barren landscape with a merciless quality, the twinging and sporadic guitar strings merge with an ambiguously innate whistling, rapid gunshots and passing flutes. Before any of the main cast has appeared on screen, the thematic underpinnings of Morricone’s orchestra have come to prominence; shaping his career and recreating the Western’s musical framework.

Revelling in its genre of filmmaking, the blood red filter accompanies the vast long shot to elicit the assassination of the lone rider, who is seen falling off his horse moments previous. Methodically designing this symphonic layering ‘Sergio asked for simple themes, easy on the ear, tonal, popular themes. He falls in love with the music and wants more from it’, as stated by Morricone himself in Christopher Frayling’s 2000 book Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death. Rejecting any form of filler melodies, swaying the audience towards a particular emotion, the prolonged effect of sustaining intimate tones towards Clint Eastwood’s Monco, Lee Van Cleef’s Colonel Douglas Mortimer and sinister El Indio (Gian Maria Volonté) makes the trio’s final showdown all the more overwrought.

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Where the wild west grows

A virtuoso craftsman, Nick Cave’s (pictured above) compositions, with fellow collaborator Warren Ellis, in Hell or High Water employs a comparable symphonic arrangement to Morricone, inducing the Western milieu into an unforgiving state. The opening track, Comacheria, is structured around strings, equivalent in For a Few Dollars More’s fluttering guitar score. Yet, the melancholic drawn out quality possessed in the violin strings and piano is firstly classical. Orchestrally akin to an overture, the elongated strings permeate, until the introduction of a solemn piano.

Integrated with the decaying mise-en-scene of Texas as the graceful camera of Giles Nuttgens follows the brothers before and after their first bank robbery, the space created between the expanding notes away from one another accentuates the idealised American notions of masculinity, eventually allowing them to take centre stage. Taylor Sheridan’s script balances these themes, equally with the aid of Chris Pine, Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges’ performances. Sheridan tapers his tale towards the two Howard brothers, Toby and Tanner

Finely tuned, sorrow is sustained by the detached compositions of Cave and Ellis. Working alongside each other on their third Neo-Western – after The Proposition (John Hillcoat) and formerly mentioned The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford – the inventiveness demonstrated in scratching away at the thin veneer of assertive masculine in these two previous films comes to an accumulative impact in Mackenzie’s film. Gone are the relatively whirring pitches of Morricone. What remains is a score that has “scale and emotion”, yet “does not feel manipulative or overwhelming”, as the Scottish director wrote in a statement previous to the soundtrack’s conception.

Allegorical of the Western genre’s lingering impression over a false sense of identity, Sheridan’s sheriff Marcus Hamiltion (Bridges) nears the end of his lengthy career. Similarly, both Toby and Tanner are lead to rob banks due to their disenfranchised by witnessing the destruction caused by the Iraq conflict, a post-global financial crisis and the threat of their home being re-financed. The strains of contemporary society wrap themselves around this barren land, leaving scavengers as Toby and Tanner in its wake.

In a way, Hell or High Water is a post-cowboy world where the gun slinging heroes of Eastwood and Van Cleef have long gone. Operating in a foreboding fashion, Mackenzie, along with Cave and Ellis, use the template of the Western to speak to a greater truth- the fading of the America’s global dominance. Still, divided in their motifs, the musical formations of this Neo-Western and For a Few Dollars More, unknowingly or not, share an analogous construction of genre. Irrespective of their time of production, both these Westerns deploy a harmonious transition of sight and sound to incite a cinematic odyssey into the wild wild West.

For a Few Dollars More is showing at the BFI South Bank as part of the Sergio Leone season taking place right now!

Brimstone

Posted on by victorfraga

The wild wild west is an unforgiving place, especially in the New World during the 16th century. Dutch filmmaker Martin Koolhoven’s English language debut, Brimstone, is especially quick to spell out such a value. Following the story of Liz (Dakota Fanning) over numerous points of her life, the narrative is separated into four chapters; Revelation, Exodus, Genius and Retribution. Simply viewing these four sections, one does not need a PhD in Religious Studies to see the themes which Koolhoven is keen to discuss. Featuring Guy Pearce as an evil Dutch Priest, who also happens to be a paedophile with assassin abilities, Brimstone’s feminist core is destroyed by gratuitous violence towards women, peculiar plotting and an over reliance on style over substance. Having taken him years to write, if this world was a perfect one Koolhoven would never have bothered to pick up pen and paper.

Revelation opens with Liz serving as a midwife to the small farm town in America’s mid-west. She is mute, yet we do not know how or why she came into such a state. Married to Frank (Paul Anderson) with one child born by him and another other Frank’s deceased wife, life is fairly uneventful, that’s until the new Reverend (Guy Pearce) enters their routine Sunday service stating that ‘we have all sinned and damned to hell’. Sporting a Dutch accent and a long scar on his left eye, Pearce is clearly having some fun in the role; if only that was applicable to the audience.

Shot with a keen eye, Koolhoven clearly knows how to shoot film. Varied with over the head shots, vast long frames and blacks that draw the eye in, the film isn’t boring to look at. The mid-west is captured with a clarity similarly seen in Slow West. However, unlike John Maclean, the narrative is convoluted to the point of confusion. After Revelation, Joanna (Emilia Jones) is introduced in Exodus out of left field and the narrative pieces have to be unnecessarily moved by the viewer, not the filmmakers.

Female violence on screen is precarious. Though the horror of giallo’s such as Suspiria (Dario Argento, 1977) appear sadistic and through the male gaze, its violence serves a a greater purpose; genre and auteur theory. The complete antithesis to this sub-genre of horror, Brimstone’s extreme violence towards women is grotesque and unnecessary. The film’s violent edge is introduced early enough to know this world is unforgiving and does not need repetition or revisiting. From whippings, to attempted rape and inevitably death, the violence never serves a greater purse, for example character.

Though readers and the general public may think critics go into films looking to destroy them, I want every film I watch the be brilliant. Sadly, in this case, one must avoid it at all costs. The wild wild west provokes to be a dismal experience in Brimstone’s instance. It’s sure dirty, just the type of filth we don’t like.

Brimstone is out in cinemas across the UK on Friday, September 29th.