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In Reply to: RE: Any Western fans? Well, podnuh, you better get over to the bunkhouse and posted by tinear on January 29, 2010 at 09:55:31
What I'm less enamored of are the one-note, ham-fisted John Wayne westerns. Yeah, Richard Boone is pretty good in just about any western (always liked his Have Gun-Will Travel series), but his acting was good in other types of films as well (unlike John Wayne).
Many of the best westerns have been the gritty, loner-against-the-odds tales Clint Eastwood filmed over the past four decades. These bridge the gap between epic grandeur of the Old West and personal storytelling (Pale Rider, High Plains Drifter, The Unforgiven, etc.); Eastwood's westerns are very stylized and believably realistic, IMO.
However, when all is said and done, there are few western movies which actually represent the Old West the way it really was for anyone who has done the historical research.
AuPh
Follow Ups:
never misses, the villains never hit anything. Films like "Pale Rider" which only work as allegories aren't Western enough for me. Philosophic pretension and Westerns? Not for me.
Boetticher had a very unique vision of the West, of the struggles, and he also understood that in a lawless country, right and wrong seldom were pure distillations.
Anyhow, I think you'd like this film. Boone is creepy, murderous... but he is human and not a caricature of evil.
Sure, you can slice and dice them all you want, put this and that on top, the bottom line is - if you like it, and I do, they all are fine, the caricature ones, the "serious" ones, as long as they are just slightly above the "Very Bad" grade.
When I watch a western I engage a different part of the brain, and I don't care if the hero shoots at a caricature... which is true in 95% of cases.
And frankly, the more "serious" ones, like Gary Cooper's High Noon, are also more boring than the others... they are neither fish nor fowl...
I think a western has to be fairly dumb to be truly enjoyable as... ahem... a western.
After all... who would want to spoil his hot dog with some fancy gourmet sauce or expensive wine?
... but that's what makes westerns stick to your ribs better than the so much of the overhyped "serious" art house cuisine. Westerns as a genre run the gamut, they can be as simple as a "B" picture shoot-'em-up or as complex and varied as any situation cinema with intellectual pretensions, but one thing they all westerns have in common: they are fundamentally American.
High Noon boring? Wash your mouth out with lye soap! Have you ever considered what The Wild Bunch represents or discussed what Sam Peckinpah's transitional western genre films were about? Contemporary western films often deal with the harsh realities of adjusting to a constantly changing world and delve into the not-so-B&W aspects of loyalty, heroism and villainy rather than the overly simplified and glorified legends.
I disagree with you completely when you suggest that the western has to be "fairly dumb to be truly enjoyable." That sounds more like a personal issue or perhaps just a lack of knowledge on the subject. To the contrary, some of the more involving westerns feature compelling anti-heros, those on the fence or at a turning point in their lives. These are ethical concepts that transcend genre.
What westerns can do better than any other type of reality based film is to represent the shifting lifestyles between colonial expansionism and industrialized America, the uprooting of indigenous tribes, hardship, lawlessness, frontier justice, opportunism and disappointment, cultural and racial divisions. These are universal themes, but they can often be explored in a western setting (removed from our own) with much more poignancy than in a contemporary one.
AuPh
Shane on you, I say!
thrillers can be art but the majority are tripe---yet, is that any different from any other genre?
NO! Westerns are NOT fast food but they are distillations, reductions of violent human emotions and desires, true examples of what happens in a "laissez-faire" situation, both socially, economically, and morally.
I believe it was Samuel Johnson that said courage is the most important of all virtues because without it, no other is possible. In Westerns, courage is always the main theme.
Given the simple primitives from which a typical western is assembled, it does not raise to status of art... good artisanship, yes. Which is not to say someone might not try to bring art into this simple endeavor, but that would be a great exception rather than a rule, and I don't recall any such work. The theme or courage alone is not much, and it is easy to be courageous when you can fire twenty shots from a six-shot revolver and hit thirty bad guys.
Seriously... most of all it reminds me of pro wrestling. A tad above, yes... :)
to a century of American history located in a massive geographical zone?
Critics as great as have put ink to paper more properly compare the American Western to Greek drama. That is worth discussion.
What do they know?
somehow has more artistic gravitas?
C'mon.
Trying to puzzle me to death?
bands of criminals, grasping cattle barons, exacerbated by the fact that injuries would find no readily available medical attention, and, additionally, that little organized or effective law enforcement existed, untreatable diseases including those from livestock were common---- well, I'd argue that proves a very interesting crucible in which to observe human nature. In contrast, we have today's world with all of its "improvements" all leading to more civilization and certainly less dramatic possibilities.
I still have no idea why and for what end.
You seem to be saying that the particular period in some country's history, being a difficult one, automatically means one can only depict it in primitive cliche ways. I see no logic in that statement.
Mankind history has seen MANY periods of incredible struggle, suffering, upheaval. All of those have been depicted in various works of art in both good and bad ways. There is absolutely no reason why one could not tell a Wild West story in a serious, and artistic way, the fact it was not done (to my memory) is just the reflection of tradition and smart mass-marketing.
main characters portrayed in "The Searchers" by John Wayne and Monty Clift were such? How about Eastwood's in "Forgiven"? Or Alan Ladd's in "Shane?" Or the Randolph Scott character I describe above in the Budd Boetticher film?
Sure, only a tiny percentage of Westerns are very good but that holds for all types of film, certainly.
My point about corporate America is that it necessarily is no more complex than the Western "world"--- and certainly no more interesting, excepting the familiarity.
Perhaps you can expand upon your assertion?
Vic, go to 35th St. Red Hots on the South Side over by White Sox park and you won't need to "dine". A snappy natural casing Vienna and fresh cut fries; surely all a man's man like you needs for satisfaction. ;)
He's got a bottle of 1961 Chateau Lafite, will go great with the dog.
No hot dog this time.
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