Now we have “challenged the western film as a genre” for 60 years
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CHRONICLE. When the ambition to pull the strings on the western genre becomes a little too elaborate, it’s easy to dream away to Kevin Costner’s new mammoth project.
The classic story of Western movies is that in the beginning there were only cowboys and Indians. The white man was a hero, the brown “savages” were dangerous. Only in the 1960s did people start to rethink, as Hollywood changed, and suddenly things weren’t black and white anymore.
It’s not really that simple. Racism has been a clear part of the Western genre and it is certainly easy to think of the old films from a perspective similar to a child’s game, bang-bang and bow. But the films challenged the mythology early on.
Already in the 1930s, the role of the hero in Western films began to become complicated. There, “Westward ho” (1935) has been singled out as a predecessor. John Wayne plays the leader of a group of men who have taken the law into their own hands. What is right and wrong?
Revisionist West the new normal
Over the next three decades, these initial psychologizing attempts evolved into a full-blown attitude of questioning, parodying, and experimenting with the myths of the American West.
The so-called revisionist West is the new normal, one might say. Now it is difficult to get away with saying that you are challenging the genre. After all, we haven’t done anything else for 60 years now.
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This weekend is the cinema premiere of “The settlers”, a film about Chile and Argentina’s dark past. The film is about a genocide that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. The director Felipe Galvez Haberle at the same time wants to smash the western film, which he calls “propaganda” in interviews.
Unfortunately, there is a slightly sought after, almost irrelevant, feature in the film in the form of a hired Texas old man who participates in the killing of the indigenous population. A supporting character who doesn’t add much.
Other parts of “The settlers”, not least the message about the human rights violations that have been swept under the carpet, are significantly stronger.
Comeback as a western director
Nowadays it is Kevin Costner who appears as the greatest symbol or defender of the traditional Western film. This summer he is current with “Horizon”, an epic divided into two biofilms. It will be his big comeback as a director in the genre, after the excellent “Open range” (2003).
By all accounts, Costner will not be breaking new ground in the genre. He doesn’t need that either. It is hard enough to achieve good quality otherwise.
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