7/5/15 (Part Two): A Jackrabbit in a Den of Wolves

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Andrew Robertt, Ben Mendelsohn, Best of 2015, betrayal, bounty hunters, Caren Pistorius, cinema, class systems, dark humor, directorial debut, father-daughter relationships, feature-film debut, film reviews, films, flashbacks, greenhorns, Jay Cavendish, Jed Kurzel, John Maclean, Kodi Smit-McPhee, love story, Michael Fassbender, Movies, optimism vs pessimism, outlaws, Robbie Ryan, Rory McCann, sardonic tone, set in 1860s, Silas Selleck, Slow West, the Beta Band, the myth of the Old West, the taming of the Wild West, the Wild West, UK-New Zealand films, upper vs lower class, voice-over narration, Westerns, writer-director

There’s a point in writer-director John Maclean’s instantly classic feature-debut, Slow West (2015), that just may be one of the subtlest, most cutting bits of insight into the human condition that I’ve seen in some time. As they recover from the aftermath of a particularly chaotic, violent robbery attempt at a general store, 16-year-old Scottish greenhorn Jay Cavendish (Kodi Smit-McPhee) looks past the stack of still-smoking corpses and right into the eyes of the dead robbers’ now-orphaned children. The children are impossibly young and innocent, their wide eyes seemingly unable to process the complete upending of their world, as they stand silently, gripping each others’ hands tight.

Feeling the instant onus of responsibility, Jay tells his travelling companion, hardened, sardonic gunfighter Silas Selleck (Michael Fassbender), that they’ll just need to take the kids with them. It’s the only thing that makes sense, after all: Jay and Silas weren’t responsible for the death of the urchins’ parents but they would be complete monsters if they just left them there, on their own, to die. The kids can just hitch a ride with them as they proceed on their mission across the frontier wasteland, in search of Jay’s beloved Rose (Caren Pistorius). Jay is eager to help, his eyes bright and determined, until Silas take all the wind out of his sails with one off-handed response: “And then what?” Silas, you see, is nothing if not a realist and knows one very important fact above all else: the desire to do good just isn’t enough…without the ability to follow through, it’s all just stuff and nonsense…smoke and bullshit. He accepts the fact that Jay won’t: taking the kids with them would be as sure a death-sentence as leaving them there to rot, good intentions be damned.

It’s precisely this level of insight and intelligence that makes Slow West not only the best Western to come down the pike in years but also one of the very best films of this still-in-progress year. A mature, darkly humorous and gorgeously shot character study that has little use for easy stereotypes or empty action, Maclean’s debut is the perfect antidote for overwrought, multiplex inanity, the very antithesis to the gazillion-dollar superhero films that currently clog cinematic arteries. Featuring a fantastic cast, a brilliant script and images lovely enough to frame, Slow West should be a poignant reminder of a time when cinema didn’t need to rely on shouting and CGI to slug audiences right in the solar plexus.

Plotwise, Slow West is the very definition of streamlined efficiency. The aforementioned Jay Cavendish, the son of a Scottish lord and lady, travels to the untamed chaos of 1860s frontier America in pursuit of his beloved Rose and her father, John (Rory McCann), after a terrible accident finds the father and daughter forced to leave their native land one step ahead of a lynch mob. With only the vaguest idea of where to look for his beloved, Jay sets off across the plains, so wet-behind-the-ears that he practically leaves a puddle wherever he goes.

In no time, Jay finds himself in the crosshairs of a group of miscreants hunting a fleeing Native American, one short step from getting his naive brains blown out all over his citified duds. At the last-minute, however, a mysterious gunman appears and blasts everyone but Jay straight to hell: this is the silent, contemplative Silas, a character who would’ve been played by none other than Clint Eastwood were this about four decades older. Silas knows that Jay is an accident waiting to happen, a plucky little chicken traipsing his way through an entire country full of hungry foxes, and he offers to be his bodyguard, in exchange for a little cold, hard cash. Jay heartily agrees, although he’s completely unaware of the other half of this particular coin: there’s a huge bounty out on Rose and her father (dead or alive) and Silas wants Jay to, unwittingly, lead him right to a much bigger payday.

As the two ride across the Old West, they encounter an almost endless variety of outlaws, wandering musicians, grizzled bounty hunters and foreign immigrants, each individual following their own particular path to salvation or destruction. Chief among these unique characters is Silas’ former gang leader, the extraordinarily lethal Payne (Ben Mendelsohn): Payne and his gang also have their sights set on Rose and her father and certainly won’t mind burying an old colleague, if they have to. As Jay and Silas continue to bond, they get ever closer to the beloved Rose, albeit with some suspiciously gunfighter-shaped shadows following behind. Will Silas be able to overcome his patently cynical nature in order to help his young charge? Will Jay ever reunite with Rose? Will true love really save the day or it just a myth as fanciful and false as Jay’s sunny view of this “brave new world”?

First off, let’s make one thing clear: Slow West is just about as perfect a film (certainly as perfect a full-length debut) as I can recall seeing, the kind of movie that hits you immediately and keeps you rapt right through the closing credits. From the genuinely stunning cinematography (if Robbie Ryan doesn’t get nominated for an Oscar, I’ll punch a hole in a wall) to the often whimsical score to the utterly thrilling action setpieces, Slow West is one exquisitely crafted piece of art. Add in a truly smart script, full of great dialogue and surprising doses of humor (the scene where Jay and Silas come upon the skeletal body of a logger crushed beneath a tree, ax still in hand, is one of the single greatest sight gags ever) and one of the best casts in some time and I’ll be honest: I can’t really find much fault here. At all.

Fassbender and Smit-McPhee are absolutely perfect as the unlikely partners, each playing off the other in ways both expected and truly surprising. The aforementioned Eastwood reference is not stated lightly: as someone who worships at the altar of everything Eastwood (at least through the ’90s), I found plenty of nice parallels between Fassbender’s performance, here, and my squint-eyed childhood hero. His is a low-key performance, as much about what’s not said as what is. While I’m usually not the biggest fan of cinematic voice-overs, Silas’ narration throughout is an integral part of the perfection, leading us to one of the most perfect endings I’ve seen in some time.

For his part, Smit-McPhee finds the perfect balance between Jay’s inherent helplessness and the steely determination that allowed him to make this dangerous trek in the first place. At any point, the character of Jay could have slipped into either obnoxious comic relief (look at the silly Scottish wimp!) or complete irrelevancy (why focus on this yahoo when you’ve got badass Silas over there?). It’s to both Smit-McPhee and Maclean’s tremendous credits, however, that Jay is always sympathetic: we want him to succeed because he seems like a genuinely good, hopeful and positive person. This pie-in-the-sky optimism is absolutely critical to the film’s underlying themes and Slow West wouldn’t be nearly the overwhelming success it is without his able participation. My advice? Get Fassbender and Smit-McPhee into another film, stat!

Like the best films of Jim Jarmusch, however, the supporting cast gives as good as the leads do. Pistorius is perfect in a relatively small role, imbuing her character with such a co-mingled sense of joy and unbearable sorrow that she makes every second of her screen time count. Mendelsohn, who might be the very definition of an actor who really needs no introduction, absolutely shines as the gang leader, turning in one of the coolest, most fun and vile villains to hit the big-screen since the glory days of Peckinpah films. In fact, much of Slow West recalls Peckinpah’s work in style and theme, if not necessarily unmitigated bloodshed. With his odd fur coat, droll manner and reptilian coldness, Payne is an instantly iconic creation: my only complaint, here, is that we don’t get nearly enough of him.

Production-wise, Slow West is at the absolute top of its game, no two ways about it. What really tips the film into classic territory, however, is how smart and insightful it is. This isn’t the stereotypical Western, full of flinty men blowing other flinty men to Kingdom Come. In many ways, Slow West is about the disparity between intent and action, between wanting a better world and actually doing something about it. Time and time again, Silas points out the difference between his and Jay’s personal philosophies: Jay sees the Wild West as a place of endless promise, full of hard-working people doing their best to overcome the elements (and themselves), carving out their own spot in an unforgiving landscape, while Silas sees the frontier as a no-man’s-land full of outlaws, dust, murder and drudgery. To accept Jay’s worldview is to invite absolute destruction, as far as Silas is concerned: let your guard down just once and you’re wormfood. To accept Silas’s worldview, however, is equally destructive: if no one is good, if no one can change and if the capacity for peaceful coexistence is a myth, what, exactly, do we have to live for?

As smart as it is beautiful, Slow West is an absolute treasure, the kind of film that the Coens thought they were making with their True Grit (2010) remake, only to fall short of the mark. As apt to make you chuckle as stare in awe, Maclean has established himself as one of the most exciting new filmmakers operating right now: the fact that the writer-director is only on his first film (after a pair of shorts) is even more extraordinary. The fact that Maclean comes to us not through the film world but the music world is that much more astounding: erstwhile music fans might recognize him as one of the driving forces behind Scottish indie heroes The Beta Band.

To restate the very obvious: I absolutely loved Slow West. From the craft to the message to the absolute perfect synthesis of form and meaning, Maclean’s debut is nothing short of a revelation. At 84 minutes, there isn’t one wasted scene, shot or motion, no sense of pandering, hand-holding or dumbing-down. This is cinema at its very best, the kind of movie that makes you feel glad to be alive. As a lifelong movie fan, I look for films like this all the time but it’s like finding a needle in a field of haystacks. Good thing, then, that Maclean is all needles and no hay: when I’m looking for a quality film in the future, I have a pretty good idea where to look.  If you enjoy quality movies, too, I suggest you do the same thing.

6/14/14 (Part Two): When Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend

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1960's films, American Old West, Andy Devine, auteur theory, cinema, classic films, classic movies, Denver Pyle, Edmund O'Brien, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, flashback narrative, gunslingers vs lawyers, James Stewart, James Warner Bellah, John Carradine, John Ford, John Wayne, Ken Murray, lawyers, Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, legend vs reality, Liberty Valance, Movies, Ransom Stoddard, senator, Shinbone, statehood, Strother Martin, the law vs the gun, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the myth of the Old West, the Old West, the taming of the Wild West, the Wild West, Tom Doniphon, Vera Miles, Westerns, Wild West, William H. Clothier, Willis Goldbeck, Woody Strode

In many ways, the American “Old West” is just as mythical a location as Tolkien’s Middle Earth or Lewis’ Narnia: composed of equal parts real history, tall tales, folk legends, personal myth-building, self-rationalization and flat-out malarkey, the Wild West has become so absorbed into the fabric of pop culture, by this point, that is hard to say where the stories end and the truth begins. Much of this mythologizing is thanks to the work of American filmmakers like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Sam Peckinpah and Fred Zinnemann, directors who helped shape the public’s opinion of the American Old West as a rough-and-tumble, lawless land where the six-gun was the only jury and where a strong-willed man could carve out an empire with his bare hands. Classic Hollywood Westerns such as Stagecoach (1939), My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), Broken Arrow (1950), High Noon (1952), Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956),  Rio Bravo (1959), The Magnificent Seven (1960) and The Wild Bunch (1969) have long posited the West as just such a brutal, beautiful and untamed wilderness, America’s last refuge against the relentless march of progress and industrialization that swallowed the rest of the nation part and parcel.

Nothing, of course, can withstand the march of time for long and the “Wild West” was no exception. Once the railroad began to unite far-flung settlements into something that resembled a larger community, as well as linking the West with the much much-maligned, industrialized East, it was only a matter of time before the formerly untamed frontier would fall to the natural progress of the modern world. As someone who became one of the mythologized West’s biggest proponents, it likewise fell to auteur John Ford to write its eulogy, once the time had passed. To that end, Ford tolled the funeral bell with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), a film that purported to bring together two of the Westerns biggest stars, John Wayne and James Stewart, even as it brought the curtain down on traditional notions of the Old West.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is structured as a flashback narrative, beginning in the “present-day” and moving backwards in time to show us the events that led us to where we are. In the present, Senator Ransom Stoddard (James Stewart) and his wife, Hallie (Vera Miles), have returned to the tiny frontier town of Shinbone in order to attend the funeral of one Tom Doniphon (John Wayne). Once there, Ransom and Hallie reconnect with old friends, including Shinbone’s former marshal, Link Appleyard (Andy Devine) and Doniphon’s faithful manservant Pompey (Woody Strode). When the local newspaper editor pressures Stoddard for a story concerning his return to the dusty hole-in-the-wall that is Shinbone, Stoddard deigns to give him the full scoop, telling the story of how he first came to Shinbone as an idealistic lawyer fresh out of law school and met Tom, his future wife, Hallie, and the miserable human being that would end up helping Stoddard secure his reputation: the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).

Stoddard describes how he came to Shinbone after being waylaid, beaten and robbed by Liberty Valance during a stagecoach holdup. Despite the continued advise of the cowardly Marshall Appleyard and all-around good-guy Tom, Stoddard is determined to bring Valance to justice with the letter of the law, rather than the vengeance of a six-gun. Easier said than done, however, as Valance and his minions, Floyd (Strother Martin) and Reese (Lee Van Cleef), pretty much run the town, keeping everyone scared (including the Marshall) and under the thumbs of the local land barons. When the topic of statehood comes up, Valance and Stoddard end up on opposite sides of the issue: Stoddard knows that statehood will lead to modernization, industrialization and law and order, whereas Valance’s employers know that statehood will spell the end of their unchecked land rights. Neither man will back down, sending everyone in Shinbone, including Tom and his then-girlfriend Hallie, hurtling towards a violent confrontation that will signal the end for some while heralding a bold, new beginning for others. Liberty Valance is the second fastest gun in the territory, however, and Stoddard is the epitome of the “citified dude” – he’ll need more than justice on his side to take on Valance…he’s going to need a guardian angel.

As with any elegy, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is an exceptionally sad film, not only for the events which take place on-screen but for the greater significance that these events held for our society. Although Ford’s film is full of rousing action set-pieces, lots of sharp humor and some nice, broad characterizations (Andy Devine is particularly goofy as the whiny, constantly eating sheriff), there’s a muted, toned-down feel to the proceedings that mark this as the furthest thing from one of Ford’s more “traditional” Westerns, such as Fort Apache or Rio Grande (1950). There’s very little in the way of celebration here, even in those moments where the “good guys” are succeeding (the saloon scene where Tom kicks Valance’s guy right in the face, the statehood representative meeting), since the film seems to be all too aware that these successes will, ultimately, spell doom for the old-fashioned Old West. If Tom Doniphon stands for the traditionally rugged Western settler/survivor, he also stands for the mythologized Western director, as well: whereas artists like Hawks, Ford and Zinnemann plied their trades for a particular mindset in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, auteurs like Peckinpah, Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood were dealing with not only the “death” of the traditional American Old West but also changing audience expectations and perspectives.

Your particular stance on progress and industrialization will probably color your particular view of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as being more or less a tragedy. On the one hand, Ransom Stoddard’s relentless quest to bring law and order, along with the niceties of “polite” society, to the untamed West is a noble (if slightly naive) pursuit. Industrialization in the American West led to a number of irrefutable benefits, such as the proliferation of better medical practices, educational institutions, the creation of a justice system that was wholly dependent on mob justice, etc… but it also led to the marginalization of hard-scrabble folks like Tom Doniphon (and Liberty Valance, if we want to split hairs), folks who would be completely out-of-step in a newly “Easternized” West. After all, this was their land, too, and there’s something inherently sad about the notion that a fundamentally good person like Tom (at least as portrayed in the film) will be allowed to lose everything, including the love of his life, in order to uphold Stoddard’s “new order.”

This notion of “the good of the many vs the good of the few” seems to be foremost on Ford’s mind, as the film makes no bones about the fact that Hallie and Tom were the “truer” couple, whereas Hallie and Ransom are the more “proper” couple. Hallie and Tom’s love is portrayed as passionate, romantic and messy, whereas Hallie and Ransom’s marriage seems to be more convenient, albeit more clinical. This, in micro, is the argument between the messier, more wild and more “authentic” Old West versus the more restrained, civilized and law-abiding “New” West. It’s the cactus rose versus the actual rose…Tom Doniphon’s antiquated notions of right and wrong versus Ransom’s Stoddard’s stubborn reliance on the rules of law and order…the emotion versus the intellect.

While The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is full of great performances, particularly John Wayne’s out-of-place cowboy Jimmy Stewart’s pompous, blowhard but well-meaning lawyer, the film really belongs to Lee Marvin’s dastardly villain: Liberty Valance is easily one of the greatest cinematic monsters to ever slime across the big screen and Marvin brings him to terrifying, shuddering life. He’s able to spit out “dude” with the same venom that others might reserve for “motherfucker” and the scene where he horsewhips Stoddard is as horrifying as something from a fright film. Marvin, ably backed up by Peckinpah mainstay Strother Martin and the one and only Lee Van Cleef, is a true force of nature in the film but he’s anything but a one-dimensional villain. In many ways, he functions as the flip-side to Doniphon’s “noble cowboy” character, showcasing the dark side of the Wild West that made Stoddard’s brand of law and order such a necessary, if game-changing, development in the building of the West.

Elsewhere, on the acting front, Edmund O’Brien provides some welcome comic relief as the besotted local newspaper editor/newly-elected statehood rep Dutton Peabody, while Vera Miles is an expressive, eternally sad presence as Tom Doniphon’s beloved Hallie, who ends up embracing both Ransom Stoddard and the change that he embodies. Truth be told, the only performances that grate a bit are Andy Devine’s ever-foolish Link Appleyard and Woody Strode’s ever loyal Pompey. Devine’s whiny schtick gets old quick, although he has some really nice, emotional beats in the “present-day” part of the film, particularly his quietly lovely scenes with Hallie, whereas Pompey is pretty much a non-entity, serving only to follow around and support Tom without much characterization of his own (the most we get is the rather on-the-nose bit where Pompey is able to remember everything about the Declaration of Independence except for the “All men are created equal” part).

As with all of Ford’s films, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance looks great, a truly panoramic vision of the Old West that still manages to convey a sense of muted sadness. The black and white cinematography, courtesy of William H. Clothier (who shot several dozen other John Wayne Westerns), is always crisp and clear and there’s a typically expert use of directional lighting and shadows, particularly in the climatic scene where Stoddard and Valance face-off in the streets of Shinbone. Fittingly, the film often feels slightly oppressive, as if there’s a hanging sense of doom over everything: it’s the sense of tension befitting something like High Noon but with none of that film’s sense of release. Even after Valance is dead, Doniphon isn’t (personally) victorious and Ford’s film doesn’t seem particularly interested in celebrating his failure to preserve the old way of life.

Despite it’s status as a classic Western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just as much a character drama or tragedy (Doniphon’s fatal flaw is his inability to change with the times, which ends up being Stoddard’s biggest strength) as it is a traditional oater. While John Ford was responsible for some of the most iconic visions of the Old West put to film, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is just a little bit different. Rather than a celebration of a by-gone era and the people who forged a nation, Ford’s opus is a quiet, serious meditation on the unflinching nature of progress, industrialization and the “taming” of the Old West. In any other film, the moment where Ransom and Hallie end up together would be the culmination of their struggles and a source of joy for the audience. In The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Ford asks viewers not to focus on the “winners” in the foreground, but the “losers” in the background, those men and women, including Tom Doniphon, who triumphed over a harsh landscape but ended up being shot straight in the heart by that most unavoidable of all enemies: the modern age.