BEFORE: I know what you're thinking, why am I interrupting a perfectly good, if overly long, romance chain with a Western film? Well, believe me, I agonized over this decision, and I maybe read a bit too far into the plot synopsis on Wikipedia before deciding to include this - this is partially for spacing reasons, I needed to add more films to hit my Easter film on the nose, but also the Oscars are coming up, and this film has the MOST nominations, with 12. I can at least have a contender that I've seen in a bunch of categories, and if it wins anything, I can say, "Wow, I saw that one before it won the Award for Best Editing!" or if it wins nothing, I can say, "Yeah, I saw that one, it was OK, it makes sense that it got beat for Best Adapted Screenplay."
(Here are the two main arguments AGAINST watching this film today - one is that it's way off-theme, I had a nice quiet chain going about love and relationships and this may stick out like a sore thumb in the February line-up and the other is that with the new Doctor Strange movie coming out in May, perhaps I should save this one for then, because it will give me more linking options, it could be much easier to GET to "Doctor Strange 2" with a fair number of other Benedict Cumberbatch films on my radar. I can't really worry about that now, especially since I haven't programmed May yet, only part of April. But watching this film here also strands a film called "Leave No Trace", which stars Thomasin McKenzie and Ben Foster. This film and yesterday's film therefore removed all ways to link to that film - but there's always hope, Thomasin McKenzie is in a number of films like "Last Night in Soho" and "Old" that I eventually want to watch - so this argument is therefore minimized.)
With this film and "Dune" combined, I could be interested in watching the telecast now. Maybe. I think I can still get to "Free Guy" before the ceremony, which would give me a near clean sweep of the Visual Effects category, but all the other nominated films don't seem to fit in with my agenda right now, once again I started planning much too late - and once again I resolve to do better next year. Kirsten Dunst carries over from "Get Over It", and she'll be here again tomorrow, again three appearances in a row seems to be working out for me a lot this month.
I'm late getting to this one, because I had to work a 12-hour shift at the New York Children's Film Festival, but I still have a couple hours to post TCM's "31 Days of Oscar" line-up for Sunday, March 6 before it airs:
6:15 am "Little Women" (1933)
8:15 am "Pygmalion" (1938)
10:15 am "The Lavender Hill Mob" (1952)
12:00 pm "Citizen Kane" (1941)
2:15 pm "The Great McGinty" (1940)
2:15 pm "The Great McGinty" (1940)
4:00 pm "Woman of the Year" (1942)
6:00 pm "Pillow Talk" (1959)
8:00 pm "The Iron Lady" (2011)
10:00 pm "Shakespeare in Love" (1998)
12:30 am "Jerry Maguire" (1996)
3:00 am "Antonia's Line" (1995)
3:00 am "Antonia's Line" (1995)
5:00 am "Coquette" (1929)
It's another net-positive day for me, as I've seen 7 out of these 12: "The Lavender Hill Mob", "Citizen Kane" (of course), "Woman of the Year", "Pillow Talk", "The Iron Lady", "Shakespeare in Love" and "Jerry Maguire". That brings me up to 29 seen out of 67, so now I'm running at just over 43%. So far, so good, I guess.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Slow West" (Movie 3,924)
THE PLOT: Charismatic rancher Phil Burbank inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.
AFTER: Standard SPOILER ALERT applies tonight, as this is a recent film (released in December) currently vying for Oscar gold. It's also been in the news quite a bit (any publicity is good publicity?) recently after actor Sam Elliott picked a beef with director Jane Campion in a podcast, stating that a director from New Zealand had no right to come to America and mess with our Western movies, or words to that effect. Well, Mr. Elliott is entitled to his opinion, being the man who killed both Hitler and the Bigfoot, after all - but I think he got a number of points wrong, or is perhaps mistaken about a few things. First of all, anybody can make any type of movie they want to make, except for snuff films - the industry survives when new people come along and put their own spins on westerns, sci-fi movies, rom-coms, etc. I may not like every movie, but I will champion every filmmaker's right to tell the stories that they want to tell. It's called the free market, and once we start telling people what movies SHOULD be made, it's a short ride from there to telling people what books they can and can't read, and come to think of it, we're kind of there already, aren't we? The point is the same though, all books and all movies should be made available to all people at all times, it's called the free market, and over time it decides which films and books are successful and popular from choice, not from enforced censorship, in an ideal world of course.
I strongly suspect, however, that Sam Elliott's disdain for this film comes from a different place than his support of the "purity" of the American Western, which is a B.S. argument - hasn't he ever heard of "Quigley Down Under"? It's clearly a Western, but it's set in Australia, which is very similar to the American West in some regards. "Solo: A Star Wars Story" was just a Western in space, and really, the genre can survive a LOT - even if one particular film didn't go the direction you wanted it to go. Remember "Posse"? That was a great Western with a mostly black cast, sure, it's a bit of revisionist history, but it's a damn fine movie. Also, Mr. Elliott is forgetting a key factor in ANY period piece, be it a Western or a corseted European drama, or a sci-fi film set in the future - ultimately, they reflect more about the time they were MADE than the time they're set, meaning that a film set in another time period can't help reflect the values of the people who made it, WHEN they made it.
I don't even need to hear the interview with Sam Elliott, I can bet you cash money that he was afraid to say what really bothered him, and no doubt it was the implication that there were gay cowboys. Just admit it, Sam - people who hated the movie "Posse" came off as racist, though, and if you don't like "The Power of the Dog", and say so publicly, just know that you're going to appear homophobic. There were gay people back in ancient Greece, the whole Spartan culture was built on it, and those were some MANLY men, right? Gay men didn't just disappear then for a few thousand years, only to pop up again in 1970's San Francisco, that's not possible - they just learned to hide in plain sight, that's all. And yep, some of them were probably cowboys, why else do you think one member of the Village People dressed that way? It stands to reason, statistically, that some cowboys probably swung that way. All those lone nights on the prairie, during cattle drives, men huddling together for warmth, what could be more natural? They just didn't discuss it with the outside world, I bet.
It just so happens now that most of the states where cattle ranches still exist, where there are still people who could be called cowboys, where they listen to both kinds of music, country AND western, are called "red states", they've adopted conservative values over time, and if you're still looking for homophobes during this more enlightened age, that's probably where you'll find them. But it wasn't always that way - the Conservative Party has only been in bed with the Republican Party for the last few decades. Parts of the Old West were notoriously lawless, that means that anything goes, sure, maybe more people were hard-core religious back then, but that doesn't mean that all of them were. And who decided that gay love is immoral, anyway, that feels like another holdover from the Medieval times, when the priests were writing all the rules. But if you think about it, when you hear about a priest molesting kids, it's usually boys, not girls, so where's your morality THEN?
I'm getting a bit off track, but my point is, this film does qualify under the romance rules, not just because of the feelings and desires of the central character - which, admittedly, are mostly implied and not depicted outright - but also because his brother marries a widow, and they seem fairly happy together, or at least content, so there, there's your romance element. Two people meet in the Old West, they fall in love and get married, end of story - only it's NOT the end of the story, is it? Phil, the cattle rancher in question, does not approve of his brother's new marriage, he thinks she's a gold-digger scheming to get her hands on part of the family's cattle ranch, and their extensive collection of useless cattle hides - because that makes sense. Phil also doesn't care for her teenage son, Peter, whose hobbies seem to include making paper flowers, dissecting rabbits and also dressing fancy.
Again, they're all AROUND this topic without confronting it directly, which is a bit maddening. Later in the film, the male bunch of Phil's ranchhands make catcalls at Peter, and yes, they use the insult that begins with "F", so FINALLY the film starts to talk about this. But bear in mind, these ranchhands enjoy skinny-dipping together, so this calls the whole thing into question - are the ranchhands also gay, all of them? Then if they make fun of another gay person, what is that, a form of self-loathing? Phil doesn't participate in the weekly Burbank Ranch skinny-dipping party, instead he prefers to watch from a distance. Phil apparently doesn't like to bathe, so over any extended period of time, well, he stinks. And other people point this out to him, only it doesn't make a difference, he was part of this anti-bath-er movement that was popular back then, he was exercising his American right to smell bad and not take care of himself, public health be damned. Why does this feel just a bit too familiar and current, hmmm?
When exactly is "back then", anyway? There are CARS seen in the film, and that's not normal for a Western movie. The typical Western movie tends to take place in the late 1800's, sometime between the Civil War and the turn of the century, and there are usually Native Americans to fight and there's talk of where the railroad's gonna be built - but based on the songs in this movie, and one character's mention of King Tutankhamen, I'd say this probably takes place in the 1920's (Tut's tomb was discovered in 1922) so that means this is NOT your typical Western anyway, because it's set during the jazz age, only so far out in the American West that most people haven't learned about flappers and wild parties and the end of Prohibition, not to mention reefer and the new hip craze, gay sex.
And so since Phil hasn't learned yet that society's got new rules, he remains closeted, or his version of that anyway, and he's therefore caught in some spiral of self-hatred or bad self image, thinking that his thoughts and desires are somehow evil, and this manifests itself in his poor upkeep of hygiene, plus his terrible nasty attitude toward his brother and other family members. Am I hitting some kind of mark here, or am I way off base? I suppose other answers are possible, but this is two films this week ("Passing" was the other one) where the filmmakers just couldn't or wouldn't just plainly state that characters were gay, instead they hinted it strongly, I guess so that someone who is homophobic or chooses not to assume this about characters, because they don't want to watch movies about gay people, can still watch the film and enjoy it? That seems a bit like an odd segment of the populace to market a film toward, just saying.
I'm going to score this film with the benefit of the doubt, at least for the moment - and then I guess we'll see in a few weeks if this story resonated with enough people to justify this particular spin on what a Western movie can be. Perhaps this film will just prove too obtuse for most people to "get it", that's my prediction. I'm a little bit behind now, because it took me two attempts to watch this film - I started on Friday night, but I knew that I had to get up early on Saturday morning to work, so I avoided my usual glass of Diet Mountain Dew, and stuck to water. However, this insured that I fell asleep in the recliner, about an hour into the movie. I think I woke up once and rewound back to where I fell asleep, but at that point, the damage was done and I fell asleep again. I had to finish the film late Saturday night, after the film festival, so now this means I have to get back ahead of the count somehow this week.
Also starring Benedict Cumberbatch (last seen in "Spider-Man: No Way Home"), Jesse Plemons (last seen in "I'm Thinking of Ending Things"), Kodi Smit-McPhee (last seen in "Slow West"), Thomasin McKenzie (last seen in "Jojo Rabbit"), Genevieve Lemon, Keith Carradine (last seen in "Ain't Them Bodies Saints"), Frances Conroy (last seen in "Love Happens"), Peter Carroll (last seen in "Crazy Rich Asians"), Alison Bruce, Sean Keenan, George Mason, Ramontay McConnell, David Denis, Cohen Holloway (last seen in "Hunt for the Wilderpeople"), Max Mata, Josh Owen, Alistair Sewell, Eddie Campbell (also last seen in "Slow West"), Karl Willetts (ditto), Adam Beach (last seen in "The New Mutants"), Maeson Stone Skuccedal, Alice Englert, Bryony Skillington, Jacque Drew, Yvette Parsons (last seen in "What We Do in the Shadows"), Aislinn Furlong, Tatum Warren-Ngata, Yvette Reid, Alice May Connolly, Stephen Lovatt.
RATING: 6 out of 10 hidden bottles of hooch
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