Christian Bale
HOSTILES – A Film Review
A decade ago, Christian
Bale played the reluctant temporary deputy escorting outlaw Ben Wade (Russell
Crow) to a train in the remake of Elmore Leonard’s 3:10 TO YUMA. In HOSTILES,
he’s more than reluctant; he’s defiant. A heroic, much-honored veteran of both
the Civil War and Indian Wars, Cap. Joseph J. Blocker (Bale), is ordered to
escort captive Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) back to his homeland in
Montana, presumably to die. Having lost many friends at the hands of Yellow
Hawk and his men, Blocker refuses, and it is only the threat of court martial,
and loss of his pension, by Col. Briggs (Stephen Lang), that induces Blocker to
transport Yellow Hawk and his family through deadly territory.
Jonathan Majors & Wes Studi
The movie becomes, in a
sense, a ‘road picture’, with Blocker and Yellow Hawk gradually coming to grips
with their intersecting pasts and their terrible memories. There are chance
encounters along the way. En route they meet up with Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund
Pike, Oscar-nominated for GONE GIRL), a settler whose husband and three
daughters have been piteously butchered by Comanches. Her mind shattered by her
pain, she is brought along, and begins healing along the way. Soldiers and
Cheyenne must do battle with Comanches, enemies of both. They’re also asked to
transport a soldier to a court for trial and presumably a hanging – Sgt.
Charles Wills (Ben Foster) hacked a family to pieces with an axe. Wills has a
history with Blocker – they soldiered together – and Wills is eager to convince
Blocker that his crimes are no worse than Blocker committed, and that they’re a
pair of angels next to Yellow Hawk. Interestingly, Foster, who all but walked
away with last year’s HELL OR HIGH WATER, as the bank-robbing brother with no
off-switch, has a history with Bale, as he played Crow’s obsessively-loyal
right-hand in 3:10 TO YUMA. Come to think of it, he all but walked off with that movie as well.
Rosamund Pike
HOSTILES, written and
directed by Scott Cooper, based on a manuscript by the late Donald E. Stewart,
an Oscar-winner for 1983’s MISSING, is a deeply felt story, peopled by
soldiers, Indians and civilians who express their feelings with utmost caution. Despite the familiar premise, the flow of the
story, and the people who populate it, are happily unfamiliar. The cavalry
soldiers assisting Blocker include a young Frenchman (Timothee Chalamet –
currently starring in CALL ME BY YOUR NAME), a sergeant recently treated for
melancholy (Rory Cochrane), and a loyal black corporal (Jonathan Majors)
ironically in charge of chaining the Indians. It’s full of both quiet passages,
and jarring, unflinching violence – in some ways it’s the SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
of Westerns.
Christian Bale & Adam Beach
Scott Cooper made CRAZY
HEART with Jeff Bridges, but his Western credentials go back further, to his
acting career, in GODS AND GENERALS, with Stephen Lang, and the excellent
miniseries BROKEN TRAIL. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, who also shot
Cooper’s BLACK MASS, makes full, beautiful use of the New Mexico and Arizona
locations, and at times effectively thrusts the viewer deeper into the action
than we want to go. There is also frequently a classical look to the images –
his doorway compositions are not merely an homage to John Ford, but a
jumping-off point.
My one disappointment is
that the excellent Adam Beach, who plays Yellow Hawk’s son, has virtually
nothing to do. But with a performance by Bale that runs from barely contained
fury to understated grace, and a story that is frequently grim, but never
without hope, HOSTILES is one of the finest Westerns in several years. From Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures, it
opens in theatres on January 19th.
TOMBSTONE – RASHOMON –
Alex Cox at the O.K. Corral!
There is probably no more
polarizing incident in the Old West than the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral or, as
those involved demurely referred to it, ‘the difficulties.’ 132 years after the
Earp and Cowboy factions faced each other, all that can be agreed upon is that 30
seconds after it started, Billy Clanton, and Frank and Tom McLaury were dead. There is no consensus as to whether or not it
was avoidable, and who was at fault.
“I was a kid at grammar
school in England, and in the school library was a copy of Stuart N. Lake’s
book, WYATT EARP -- FRONTIER MARSHALL,” remembers wildly-independent filmmaker
Alex Cox – whose previous Westerns include 1986’s punk neo-Spaghetti STRAIGHT
TO HELL and ‘87’s classical WALKER. “I read that, and of course it’s a total
hierography of Earp. But it was well-written, entertaining, and it got me
interested in the subject.” His favorite of the films on the subject is John
Ford’s 1946 MY DARLING CLEMENTINE. “It’s so beautiful. It doesn’t have a lot to
do with the events; it’s a made-up story, for the purpose of entertaining and
myth-making.” He also liked 1971’s DOC, “the anti-Earp version. And I kinda like
TOMBSTONE – it’s a bit long, but it tells a bigger version of the story, so you
know who Johnny Behan is, and Curly Bill Brocious, and all these guys who don’t
normally make it into the story.”
Christine Doidge as Kate, Eric Schumacher as Doc
To tell his own version,
Cox took inspiration from Akira Kurosawa’s RASHOMON, 1951’s Best Foreign Film
Oscar-winner. The story of a crime is told repeatedly from several different
perspectives, and it’s up to the viewer to decide what to believe. RASHOMON,
whose title refers to the gate of a walled city, was remade as a Western, THE
OUTRAGE, in 1964, starring Paul Newman in the Toshiro Mifune role.
The premise is explained
in the film’s opening title: “On 27 October, 1881, a time-travelling video crew
arrived in Tombstone, Arizona, to film the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Realizing they were a day late, they started interviewing the survivors.”
Adam Newberry as Wyatt
Cox’s research is as journalistic
as his premise is whimsical. The various tellings come directly from Judge
Spicer’s hearings, and the coroner’s report. Those who testify include Wyatt
Earp, Ike Clanton, Johnny Behan, and saloon-owner Roderick Hafford. Cox also
uses newspaper interviews with Doc Holliday, and a letter ‘Big Nose Kate’
Haroney wrote to her niece. Talking-head interviews lead to filmed versions of
each participant’s memories, which overlap, and oppose each other. Among events
leading up to the shootout, Wyatt offered Ike Clanton a reward for turning in
three men for stage-robbery and murder. But their versions of the proposed
deal, and involvement of Doc Holiday, differ radically. And when it comes to the walk-down, and
Sheriff Johnny Behan’s words, do we believe Wyatt’s version, that Behan said
he’d disarmed the Cowboys, or Behan’s version, that he said he was there to
disarm them?
The
casting-for-resemblance is striking: Adam Newberry as sulky Wyatt, Eric
Schumacher as manic Doc, and Benny Lee Kennedy as Ike seem to have emerged from
the pages of The Tombstone Epitaph. Kennedy’s
Ike is unexpectedly sympathetic, but Christine Doidge, as Kate, walks off with
the movie as a character who is by turns hilarious, tragic, savvy and innocent.
Doidge recalls, “Alex had given (Kate) a real space to be herself. Which is
great, because he could have easily written this film without her, or with her
in one scene; I think having Kate’s perspective is important.”
Hafford's - Richard Anderson as Hafford,
Benny Lee Kennedy as Ike
It wasn’t a film easily
put together. After a “disastrous” crowd-funding campaign, Cox spent a month preparing
at Old Tucson, accomplishing the impossible. “We shot a five-week movie in a
week.” Having recently taught a learn-by-doing film-production class at
University of Colorado Boulder, making the feature BILL THE GALACTIC HERO, he
hired several ex-students as crew.
The real Hafford's Saloon
Cinematographer Alana Murphy remembers, “I
was an assistant camera for HERO. I
suppose I made an impression. When I graduated in 2015, Alex said, hey, I’ve got
a project I might want your help with - very mysterious.” A year later she was cinematographer
on her first feature. She loved working with Cox. “He starts with a lot of
inspiration; he gave me a lot of homework, a lot of films to watch, that
inspired. That’s how I got to know him, through the source material.” The biggest challenge? “The heat. We were having technical issues
with batteries not lasting very long. And we were working on a bigger scale
then I’m used to.”
Production Designer
Melissa Erdman marveled at Cox’s ability to pull it off. “Alex really had great
planning skills in the way that the film was structured. So we had an ‘A’ unit
and a ‘B’ unit operating pretty much the entire shoot: the B unit was doing the
interviews, and the A unit was shooting the various reenactments.” Recreating
the interior of Roderick Haffords’ Corner Saloon, famous for hundreds of
pictures of birds on its walls, required major planning. “We had a pretty limited team – it was me,
and my art director, who helped to construct the inside of Hafford’s. We had
two days of load-in, and most of the stuff came pre-painted, and then putting
the bar together, and then getting all the birds put up. I had three people
cutting out birds for two days.”
Cox, like Kurosawa, has
no intention of telling the viewer if any version of the shoot-out is the
unvarnished truth, but he gives each speaker, without pre-judging, a chance to
state his or her case. While some differences are flagrant, some are
surprisingly subtle. Doidge remembers that after the shootout, as Kate remembers
it, “When Doc comes back, grazed by a bullet, I’m there, and I’m horrified. And in Doc’s version he’s just sitting on the
bed by himself. I’m not there.”
TOMBSTONE – RASHOMON will
be available on video in 2018 – stay tuned for details!
SILENTS DESCENDS ON THE AUTRY - AND OTHER AUTRY NEWS
For years The Autry has had their monthly ‘What is a Western?’ screening series –
they’re showing STAGECOACH on January 20th -- and every second month
they screen a Gene Autry double feature. They’re now adding a new film series,
The Silent Treatment, featuring silent Westerns with a live piano accompaniment
by Cliff Retallick, starting on January 27th with James Cruze’s
epic, THE COVERED WAGON (1923).
Also at the Autry, on
Tuesday, January 16th, Rob Word’s Cowboy Lunch and Word on Western
series, Rob will look at the role of women and children in Western films, and Rob
always gets terrific guests.
HENRY PARKE WINS WWA'S 'TWEET US A WESTERN' CONTEST!
I don’t mean to brag, but
like Ralphie’s old man, I just won a Major Award. I won first place in the
Western Writers of America’s ‘Tweet Us A Western’ contest, where you were challenged to
write a complete Western story in 280 characters or less – the length of a
tweet. My winning entry was as follows:
“Eureka!” shouted the old
sourdough, sluicing the last of Columbia River silt from his pan to reveal the
glitter of color. He straightened.
'Thwack!' The Indian's
arrow pierced his back between the shoulders. For a moment he knew his gold
rush was over. Then he knew nothing.
...AND THAT'S A WRAP!
...and my New Years resolution is to get the Round-Up out a lot more frequently in 2018. I've got a huge backlog of stories and interviews, and books and movies to review, and I'll get to them as soon as I can. In the meantime, please check out the February 2018 True West, where we asked readers to help us choose the Most Historically Accurate Westerns. And in my column, I take a look at continuing popularity of The High Chaparral series. Have a wonderful 2018!
Happy Trails,
Henry
All Original Contents Copyright January 2018 by Henry C. Parke - All Rights Reserved
