Buck
(2010/IFC/MPI DVD)/The Comancheros
(1961/Fox Blu-ray)/Horse Soldiers
(1959/MGM Blu-ray)/The Righteous &
The Wicked (2011/Lionsgate DVD)/3
Women (1977/Criterion Blu-ray)
Picture: C/B-/B-/C+/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+/B- Extras: B/B-/C-/C-/B- Films: B/B-/B-/C-/B-
The
Western genre is dead, yet it still casts a long shadow and in diverse
ways. It haunts all kinds of films and
other projects to this day, still not totally understood and in most cases,
regressive these days. To show the range
of influence, I have combined the following new releases to make my point.
Cindy
Meehl’s Buck (2010) is an
outstanding documentary about the life story of Buck Brannaman, a child star
along with his brother who played rodeos and did tricks for a father who lied
about being a cowboy and when their mother died young, took his occasional
drunken abuse and made it a non-stop ordeal that the two barely survived. As an adult, he stayed with horses and
founded landmark ways to train and work with horses so innovative, he became
the inspiration for The Horse Whisperer
book and film. This is not just a look
at his life, or his family or the industries of horses, cowboys and
entertainment, but a character study about U.S. culture and how its violence
permeates the Country, Western and Old South in ways that are all too easily
sanctioned. The Brannaman Brothers were
lucky they overcame their horrible circumstance.
A
companion to Temple Grandin
(reviewed elsewhere on this site) as another person who overcame horrible odds
to become a great success in life thanks to a connection with horses, I wanted
this to go on longer, but it runs a solid 89 minutes rich with rare clips,
stills and new interviews. Fortunately,
extras include deleted scenes along with a trailer and a feature length audio
commentary with Buck Brannaman and Director Meehl.
Next come
two John Wayne films on Blu-ray. We
previously reviewed Michael Curtiz’s The
Comancheros (1961) on DVD in a nice box set of Wayne’s work and you can read more about that
at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6974/John+Wayne+%E2%80%93+The+Fox
Extras
are the same and this is a better edition playback-wise than that DVD, but more
on that in a minute. We also have John
Ford’s The Horse Soldiers (1959)
which is one their lesser-known collaborations even though they are joined by
William Holden, Constance Towers, Anna Lee, Ken Curtis, Denver Pyle and
Strother Martin among them, but it also happens to be Ford’s only Civil War
film! In that, it is uneven, a little
more melodramatic than usual for him and having the Union as somewhat evil
seems underhanded, but you could do an essay on that aspect of the film and Wayne’s politics (think The Alamo and The Green Berets) were explicitly coming out of his work. There is still some good work here and it is
interesting to watch for its problems, so it is worth a look, especially for
those obsessed with The Civil War and have not seen it. A trailer is the only extra. The two are typical of the latter films of
the genre and archetypal of the Right-Wing, male dominated heart and center of
the genre for better and worse.
Craig A.
Butler’s The Righteous & The Wicked
(2011) is the latest of a series of bad would-be Westerns that want to be
A-level fare but are really B-movies and do not know it following every cliché
and formula they can come up with. I did
get a few chuckles, but it is poor and even if the makers love such films as
they mighty from some moments here, it is far from enough to make this
work. A trailer gallery, feature length
audio commentary with Director Butler & Co-Star Billy Garberina and
interview-filled making of featurette are the drawn-out extras.
Finally
is my oddest choice, but it fits more than you might think. Robert Altman is a filmmaker whose look at
American and Cinema were co-obsessions, journeys to the dark side of both that
showed great cinematic literacy and the guts to go where no one had gone
before. When he finally found his voice
deconstructing various film genres his way, M*A*S*H (1970, reviewed elsewhere on this site) featured dark
humor, some truly funny moments and the first explicit criticism of that
culture. The studio had it say it was
set in Korea, but the
costumes and situation are all Vietnam.
Brewster McCloud (1970) followed in a more
explicit fashion, then came his deconstructionist Western McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) in which the Western critique was at full
force and it never totally left his films.
The epic Nashville (1975) set in the world of
Country Music of the time said that criticism was even more relevant in modern
times, making that film a hit and huge critical success. So while he examined all kinds of films, he
kept coming back to Westerns. Buffalo Bill & The Indians (1976) was the
very next film and it did not work out, so when a version of Ragtime fell through when Warner Bros.
expected too many restrictions on him, he left (eventually being made as a big
disappointment by Milos Forman).
Though 3 Women (1977) may only seem like a
melodrama, deconstructive melodrama, different kind of “women’s film” and
surreal serio-comedy that owes something to the films of Ingmar Bergman, it is
rarely discussed in the context of a Western, but clearly is another mediation
on it.
Shelley
Duvall is Millie, a woman alone who talks all the time, but has no real friends
and works at a spa for old people in their final/dying years. One day, Pinky (Sissy Spacek hot off of De
Palma’s Carrie) shows up and gets
into her life. They are both
dysfunctional and not all there, with Pinky practically a child (childlike as
much as childish) and things take an odder turn when they become roommates, but
it is certain that they are toxic types and not healthy of reach other.
Millie’s
apartment is a phony building that might have been a motel once, painted in
almost bright colors and with a phony/upbeat name that all scream artifice, but
also reflects her artifice. The pool has
painting by Willie (Janice Rule) who turns out to be pregnant by her drunken
husband and the surreal works offer sexualized, mythological creatures and
people in stark, dangerous and even deadly situations. Their worlds will all soon clash in this
dreamlike cinematic work by Altman.
However,
that does not mean the film always works.
It was a hit and the casting is a plus, but it has some issues. For one, it wants to tell the story about
women, but it is always more obviously than many have noted a male viewpoint
film, no matter how sympathetic it is to the women, which it is not always even
when it portrays all the men as poor in character and worse. Willie (note that is a male name) is actually
all by the male artist and painter Bodhi Wind, so it is an asexual affair at
the least.
There is
definitely a sometimes psychotic shift in personalities between the characters
to the point where it reaches an absurd conclusion (without giving anything
away), yet it is not intended to be too psychological even by Altman’s own
admission and though none of the women drift into these roles, he later
explains it is also a tale of “personality theft” except that they are not
always realizing this and since it is a dream, throws that on the backburner
too.
Country
and Western iconography includes a ranch that is as barren as a ghost town, but
whose back desert area is a playground for guys to ride dirt bikes and shoot
guns. The use of diegetic music (songs
the characters can hear) is as generic as the dialogue between characters
(especially from Millie, with her strange connection to a consumerist world
that she lives vicariously through) and the California desert they live in and
near remind people more than once of Texas, evoking Country Music and Westerns
as well. Are these women a victim in any
way of this special brand of male patriarchal power, even in the liberated
1970s?
Altman
wants to have it both ways, dream and reality, male and female, art and mental
states. The film is at least thought
provoking and an original work, but some have even found it condescending and
smug, which as some validity, especially after seeing it for the first time in
many years and since Altman is one of the ultimate male auteurs, its mission to
be a female film is doomed from the beginning.
It is a sincere attempt to make the film he set out to make, but it is
at least a partial failure and I never believed it as real or plausible even
before it entered its dream state. The
characters are never totally three-dimensional and the dream-world
notwithstanding, this could only represent either dreamed-up people or
two-dimensional people in real life who do not represent everyone, no matter
what the trio of female characters are supposed to be combined in summary.
With that
said, it is one of his better-known films, yet also began a decline that
luckily was temporary, but he did not recover for years artistically, following
this with the mixed A Wedding,
run-on Quintet and failed, very
disappointing HEALTH. If anything, this is the end of Altman’s
classical period because this is where he figuratively went to sleep for a
while, possibly hibernation. It is still
a must-see film.
Extras
include a feature length audio commentary by Altman from the older Criterion
DVD release of the film, extensive stills gallery, original theatrical trailers
& TV spots and the case contains a paper pullout with technical information
on the film and a good essay by critic David Sterritt all worth your time after
seeing the film.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Women is easily the best here as expected considering it is a
Criterion Blu-ray. It has fine color (it
was a DeLuxe Color release) and the naturalistic look typical of all Altman
films of the period. As well, it comes
from a 35mm interpositive that is in fine shape for its age and is very
consistent throughout, retaining the look and feel you get from an Altman
film. Director of Photography Charles
Rosher Jr. (Pretty Maids All In A Row,
The Late Show) is among his best
work and demonstrates a superior understanding and control of the scope frame,
offering many fine compositions here. The
1080p 2.35 X 1 AVC @ 36 MBPS digital High Definition image on Comancheros is better than its DVD
counterpart, but not perfect and could use some work as can the 1080p 1.85 X 1 AVC
@ 38 MBPS digital High Definition image on Horse,
but they are the best versions of each by default on home video to date.
That
leaves the anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Buck (softer than usual, in part because of the edited-in clips)
and Wicked (obviously shot on HD
video) not looking as good, though both might be better on Blu-ray. Wicked looks too clean to really be taking
place in it time period, hampering it further and it has the most motion blur
on the list.
Women was apparently recorded in
8-track stereo by Altman, but all that seems to have survived (and it seems to
have never played in stereo theatrically, but we had insufficient information
on this as we posted this text) the PCM 1.0 Mono comes from what the pullout describes
as being from the “original 35mm magnetic track” yet the credits still say
8-track. Despite this, it sounds fine
for its age and the atonal Gerald Busby score adds effectively to the
narrative. The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio)
5.1 lossless mix on Comancheros is a
little better than the DVD edition’s Dolby 4.0 Mix also included here (so you
can compare), but is still pulling towards the front speakers, while the DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono on Horse
is fuller than expected and is about as good as it is going to get. That leaves the DVDs with Dolby Digital 5.1
mixes that are underwhelming, but Buck
has its share of mono audio and location audio limits, while Wicked does not have that excuse.
- Nicholas Sheffo
