- Directed by Ul Edel
- Written by Gordon Dawson
- Starring
- Sam Shepard
- Eric Roberts
- Brad Rowe
- Randy Quaid
- Amelia Heinle
Okay, everybody, Nathan’s about to wax analytical, so lean back and grab yourself a caffeinated beverage.
The Western is the one genre that is uniquely a product of America. Other countries have cops; other countries have multi-generational domestic squabbles; other countries have strippers who, presumably, are stalked by psychos with real sexual issues. But the Western is an outgrowth of American history, taken from the over-rapid westward expansion of Europeans on the continent, resulting in a frontier that lingered long enough before urbanization took over that the frontier developed its own culture.
Of course, what we see as the Western is not the history of said frontier expansion, but an extrapolation of cultural motifs in that frontier culture into a cultural myth. If written history is the transmutation of events into a narrative that attempts to make sense of those events, then cultural mythology further transmutes the narrative into a form that reflects the current mores of the transmuting generation; in essence, it remolds the past in the shape of the present in order to provide continuity and stability to the future. The U.S. of A. has had to work hard to catch up to older countries in the cultural mythology department, but the Revolutionary War, the western expansion, and World War 2 have all provided the raw material by the bucketload.
The Western, though, is a particularly interesting myth because the cultural motifs it draws on are all heavily archetypally invested. The premise is that men (usually this is a very masculine motif) of that time period had the means to destroy one another, thanks to the six-gun; and that law enforcement was minimally represented, usually in the form of an isolated sheriff or marshall; in any event, representatives of law and order were spread sparsely enough that they presented no overwhelming deterrent to lawlessness. Each man had the means to both decide his ethical stance, and to defend that stance.
Thanks specifically to the movies, these motifs were developed into lingering imagery permanently attached to those rudiments: The frontier towns, the black and white hats, the six-guns, the dry and dusty landscape replete with tumbleweeds (which was more a products of cheap shooting locations in California and Southern Utah than actual geographical setting, but what the hey). All in all, it comprised a wonderful toolbox of archetypes.
What is an archetype? It’s a subtextual universal theme that runs under the specifics of a story. It’s a resemblance, a correspondence to other, larger cultural motifs and narratives, so ingrained in the cultural body that some have argued that they’re actually a part of human psychological hard-wiring. It’s practically a Platonic ideal in narrative form, a larger story being played out on a smaller stage. In the hands of an inept filmmaker who doesn’t have any understanding of an archetypes importance, an archetype becomes a cliche, a story element included just because of convention: There’s gotta be a saloon, the hero never shoots first, etc. In the hands of a true storyteller, archetypes are what tell the viewer on a gut level that what he’s watching is something bigger than tow unshaven frontiersmen settling their difference with bullets.
Of course, as I said, cultural mythology is a product of the era of telling, not the era of the tale being told. And since Westerns speak very heavily about such matters as ethics and honor, of the duties of the individual to society and vice versa, about burdens of commitment and necessities of pragmatism, it’s obvious that these stories will be repeated — perhaps under different titles and with different character names, but using the same archetypes to explore these questions which are never completely answered.
Of course, with each retelling, the tale gets farther from the historical milieu that are its ostensible basis. Filmmakers in the 1950s weren’t drawing so much on the history of the late 19th century so much as they were drawing on earlier tellings of those events. And with each telling, the tether tying the narrative to the history became more tenuous. The genre had divorced itself from the reality of the frontier, the better to tell stories within those archetypes. The American Western grew beyond its borders, simply because it had become a terrific vehicle for exploring universal archetypes in narrative. That’s why the “spaghetti Western” could not only thrive as an industry, but also turn out compelling cinema on several occasions: because the Western as a genre had managed to become its own culture, no longer needing to be particularly American. (By way of comparison, how many Samurai movies have you seen made by American production companies?)
Perhaps it was inevitable that the Western would decline as a genre. For one thing, everything moves in cycles, and nothing except Wonder Bread stays at the top of the crest forever. For another, perhaps that very process of becoming its own source material distanced the Western from the “real world,” and people found themselves more drawn to cops shooting it out on city streets that looked like the city streets the viewers saw every day, rather than gunmen shooting it out on Western main streets that were stylized into the realm of fantasy. Maybe it was a certain sense of alienation; as modern citizens saw a society which bounded them on all sides and determined their actions (more by weight of population and commerce than by any overt governmental social strategy), they moved beyond the phase of admiring the self-determined characters of the Western and found themselves simply unable to relate to the situation. Maybe country music killed it all. Whatever the reason, the Western has declined as a common or default story-telling paradigm, and the only Westerns that get made are those that specifically want to tell stories stemming from that self-made culture — not the historical milieu itself, but the self-made conventions that reside in a West that never was. Thus, Unforgiven examines the character of that genre convention, the killer who’s hung up his guns; how much does a man change? The Quick and the Dead is a celebration of that most-stylized of Western conventions, the quick-draw shoot-out, essentially creating an excuse to present one shoot-out after another. Last Man Standing attempts to examine the conventions of the Western by transplanting it into another genre milieu, that of the gangster movie, with mixed results. And all of them draw heavily upon those weighty matters of life that are brought into sharp focus in such a stylized framework: loyalty and honor, responsibility and necessity, sin and condemnation and the Orphean descent and the possibility of redemption.
And now, over a thousand words into the review, I’ll finally get to the movie I’m reviewing.
Our protagonist is Sonny (Brad Rowe), a young farmboy from Kansas who read too many romanticized dime novels and begged his uncle Cavin (Peter Stormare) to be able to ride in the gang his Uncle rides with, the Blackjack Gang, named after its leader, Blackjack (Eric Roberts). The reality of the outlaw life doesn’t match his imaginings; he’s horrified by the carnage involved in his first bank job, especially when he sees Dolly Sloan (Shannon Kenny), heroine of one of his novels, happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and stop a bullet. Blackjack isn’t the romantic rogue of the novels, either; when his own gutshot brother tumbles from the saddle and asks to be put out of his misery, Blackjack responds that he doesn’t want to waste the bullet and turns away, leaving Sonny to take his first life.
Blackjack’s gang loses men to the posse’s bullets in their escape, as well as the packhorse carrying their ill-gotten gains. Remember I mentioned that imagery is very important in telling these tales? Here’s a beautiful one: the shot but still-alert packhorse, lying on the desert sand surrounded by the posse, loose dollar bills floating all around. The outlaws make their escape as a duststorm hits, which proves a mixed blessing, as they lose the path to Mexico and take refuge in a cave. Coming out the other side, they amazedly find themselves in a fertile valley with a road running through it. They cautiously follow the road, passing an ancient Indian sitting at a campfire beside a large wrought-iron gate that leads to nowhere, and end up in the picturesque town at the end, a clean Western hamlet centering on its great white church. The sheriff, Forest (Sam Shepard), welcomes the outlaws (whose cover story places them as drovers who lost their herds to Indians) to the town of Refuge, and has them put up on the saloon. Both Blackjack and Sonny notice two funny things about the sheriff: he packs no guns — in fact, no one in town does — and he’s somehow familiar to them.
Sonny meets the beautiful Rose (Amelia Heinle) assisting Doc Woods (Randy Quaid) in removing a bullet from his leg; but she’s not the only thing that catches his eye in the town. For one thing, the church bell that sounds each evening reverberates like the voice of doom itself, and every single townsperson heeds its call. For another, by happenstance Sonny notices that the sheriff bears more than a passing resemblance to the drawing of Wild Bill Hickock on one of his dime novels. And once that connection is made, other faces start falling into place. Deputy Glen (Donnie Wahlberg) is Billy the Kid. Storekeeper Brooks (J.D. Souther — and all through the movie I was saying, “Is that James Franciscus? Is’nt he dead?”) is Jesse James. And Doc Woods, naturally, is Doc Holliday. All of the above are reputed dead, though.
Blackjack doesn’t make the connection, though, and instead assumes that the sheriff and citizenry are a bunch of milksops (”Maybe they’re Mennonites,” opines Richard Edson in an amusing bit part) — an assumption that seems borne out when he lets his men ride roughshod through the streets and throw knives at the churchdoor, and all they get from the sheriff is a semi-stern talking to. Well, maybe a little more; Forest finally positions himself in front of the church door to stop the knife-throwing, and immediately stormclouds gather; and as one of the roughs raises his knife to strike Forest down, a lightning bolt strikes the knife and fries the outlaw. (And later, as rain clears the streets, the old Indian shows up and drapes the body over his horse, carting it off to parts unknown.)
At first, Sonny thinks he’s got it figured out; this is some kind of hideout for outlaws who want to retire. But late at night, watching the church (hoping to catch a glimpse of Rose), he sees a mysterious stagecoach arrive, and deliver Dolly Sloan, who had died in his arms at the bank raid. The coachman (character actor R.G. Armstrong) also gives Forest a mysterious message, that his ten years is almost up and he’ll be going home on Sunday.
Finally, Sonny sees the hidden workings of Refuge in action, when farmer Lamb (see-him-everywhere character actor John Dennis Johnston), who used to be “Lefty” Slade, loses his temper with an outlaw riding through his garden and kills him with a shovel. Immediately he drops to his knees, despondent over what he’s done, and we soon see why: the Indian appears at the edge of the garden, silently calling Lamb out; Sonny follows to see them walk into the mist that appears beyond the cast iron gates, and then the Indian walks back alone.
Refuge, as the title broadcasts from the get-go, is Purgatory; or, as Jesse James puts it, “Refuge is where the marginally good are gleaned from the hopelessly wicked.” Each of them is there for ten years, trying to resist the temptations that were their downfall in life. Failure means going off with the Indian; success means a ride in the coach. And for the four gunfighters, part of their probation means a complete avoidance of shooting or fighting of any kind — which is why no one has stood up to Blackjack.
But Sonny can’t stand by and do nothing; he knows that as the desperadoes ride out, they plan to trash the entire town, kill the sheriff and his friends, and rape Rose (who, incidentally, was hanged for having killed her abusive father). And though he knows that one unseasoned fighter can’t stand long against twenty hardened killers, what else can he do?
Will Wild Bill and his friends give up their salvation to defend the town? Will Sonny be separated, Brigadoon-like, from his love, Rose? Will Blackjack and wanna-be rapist Uncle Calvin get their comeuppance? Shucks, I can’t tell you everything; but I will tip you that, as the climax of the movie hit, the song I was humming was The Coward of the County: “Sometimes you gotta fight when you’re a man.”
As I said way back, these archetypes make wonderful elements in explorations of salvation and redemption, and Purgatory makes that its raison d’etre. As American culture has either grown up or grown timid (depending on your point of view), its Westerns have changed their main question from, “How do I do the right thing?” to “What is the right thing?” Obviously, the question here is answered within the ethic that violence, while possibly a necessary evil, is definitely necessary. And if you ever want confirmation that the Western has created its own little fantasy universe, I think that the mysterious netherworld setting of Purgatory is an implicit, perhaps unconscious acknowledgement of this fact; and the fact that these gunfighters are restored to their “heroic” flavor (despite the fact that the majority of them, in real life, probably wouldn’t have known an ethical act if it bit them on the ass) only reinforces them. This is a make-believe West, populated by fairy-tale gunslingers, and I have absolutely no problem with that. The Western has long since moved beyond history.
It’s not a flawless movie — some parts of the mysterious nature of things in Refuge raise questions that no one ever bothers to answer — but the predictability of the story is not one of its downfalls (despite what other commenters have said). As I said, there’s a fine line between a cliche and an archetype. Both are predictable, but a cliche is a cliche because it’s lazy and expected; an archetype is an archetype because it’s true.
And bubba, there’s still power in the two-gun archetype.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 40
- breasts: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllmost, but no. Sorry.
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 1
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0
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