Two Westerns on the Big Screen

“The genre is more or less dead, except when a powerful director or star gets an urge to make a vanity Western.” - Scott Eyman (2014)

We've been starved of big screen Westerns in recent years. Most of the noteworthy genre titles that I've come across evaded cinemas, such as Walter Hill's Dead for a Dollar, which went straight to DVD in the U.K., and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by the much vaunted Coen brothers was a Netflix release. It seems that non-Westerns that take on certain aspects of the genre, such as The Power of the Dog, Cry Macho and Killers of the Flower Moon are more likely to find acceptance by critics and filmgoers. It therefore feels like something of a minor miracle that in June 2024 we have two unabashed oaters going on wide release. Viggo Mortensen's sophomore directorial outing The Dead Don't Hurt premiered at the Toronoto Film Festival in 2023, while Kevin Costner's Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 was unveiled at Cannes earlier this year but, in an unusual turn of events, both are being released in the U.K. a few weeks apart from each other. It seems churlish to ask "why now?" It could be a very long time before I'm blessed with a schedule like this in my local cinemas again. 

Mortensen and Costner are continuing a curious and longstanding trend in cinema history of stars/leading men performing directorial duties on a Western. Costner himself made a triumphant debut behind the camera with Dances in the Wolves in 1990, following in the footsteps of the likes of William S. Hart (The Silent Man), Burt Lancaster (The Kentuckian), Ray Milland (A Man Alone), John Wayne (The Alamo), Marlon Brando (One-Eyed Jacks), Peter Fonda (The Hired Hand), Sidney Poitier (Buck and the Preacher), Clint Eastwood (High Plains Drifter), Kirk Douglas (Posse), Jack Nicholson (Goin' South), Ed Harris (Appaloosa) and Tommy Lee Jones (The Homesman), all of whom clearly felt that they had a vision to share of the Old West.

The dedication behind both projects is impressive in itself. Truthfully speaking, The Dead Don't Hurt has served more as an appetiser for the main course that is Horizon, probably my most anticpated film in recent memory. Prior to the screening of The Dead Don't Hurt I saw a poster in the lobby for Horizon and then a stirring trailer for Costner's film preceded Mortensen's. It was so enticing that the feature that followed may have suffered accordingly. The Dead Don't Hurt is also burdened with a title similar to Jim Jarmusch's embarrassing meta zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die from 2019. 

Mutitasking in front of and behind the camera, Mortensen tries to do too much. As well as directing and starring he also functioned as a producer, co-screenwriter and composed the score. There's an uncertainty about the story he's telling as well as the scale of the project. A jack of all trades, his character is by turns a humble immigrant, frontiersman, husband, father, carpenter, soldier and lawman. The film starts out as a town tamer Western but also gives the audience an immigrant story with feminist themes, a US Civil War backdrop, mythical-poetic conceits and Freudian notions littering the overwrought screenplay, which feels very much influenced by the stars' prior work. With its dreamy interludes one senses the influence of Lisandro Alonso, wth whom Mortensen worked on Jauja and Eureka, while the father-son relationship has echoes of The Road. He's a compelling onscreen presence but the film struggles when it focuses on the horribly miscast Vicky Krieps. Her presence suggests an insufferable 21st century progressive type in period dress, a fault common in contemporary films that are set in the past. Solly McLeod also overdoes his villainous role, as though he's concerned that the audience might not have gauged how loathsome his character is meant to be. Casting is a dying artform. 

The major failing of The Dead Don't Hurt is in its inability to contextualise its story and characters. In the BFI Companion to the Western, Edward Buscombe's entry on John Ford concludes with the statement "Ford humanises history." This essentially summarises what I find so extraordinary about Horizon. I'd almost given up all hope that it was still possible to produce a film like this. The first part already displays a scope and ambition that is virtually unmatched in 21st century American cinema. The gradual convergence of individuals, families, groups and communities towards a promise and an ideal is so brilliantly woven that there's a sense of inevitability about the forward march of history. We see the struggles and the triumphs of people seeking a better life and future. We also feel the tragedies of those who were shunned, displaced and lost in the mists of time due to the harsh nature of the thing called "progress." I feel that those who qualmed about the films episodic structure and likened it to a miniseries are missing the point by a mile here. Costner has often cited 1962's Cinerama epic How the West Was Won as a pivotal influence and what he is striving for here seems just as grand and intricate in its design and storytelling. In the history of cinema that have been certain stars who turned to directing (Clint Eastwood, Takeshi Kitano, Ida Lupino, Mel Gibson, Liv Ullmann are others who spring to mind) that proved themselves to be born filmmakers as well as actors and I only wish that Costner had directed more often but hopefully he's making up for lost time here. To get a more measured judgement on Horizon it will be necessary for me to see Part 2, which is due out in August. Costner hopes to proceed with parts 3 and 4 in the near future. I'm not anticipating a major revival of big screen Westerns like we briefly saw in the 1990s, following the success of Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven, but Costner's mammoth undertaking has given me that rarest of things: a major cinematic event from my favourtie genre that I'm hugely excited for and for that I'm thankful.