Sweet Country is a long ride of a film and it feels like it. On the surface it appears to be a simple, by the number western, but as it creeps along, it slowly reveals a film about the pain and price of Australia's bloody past-- and indeed the bloody past of most all of western history. It’s not a film that you walk out of the theater feeling
unsatisfied by. It’s a full, rich film that is also pointedly merciless and exhausting.
It is a film that asks for as much as it gives.
Sweet Country tells a seemingly simple story that would fit perfectly between Shane and High Noon (or Unforgiven and The Proposition) about an Aboriginal farmer (Sam Kelly played by newcomer Hamilton Morris) wrongly accused of murder. A posse is formed and a manhunt ensues. And throughout all of this are the complicated domestic lives of people living at the edge of the dying British Empire.
It’s
also a film that rides a line between traditional Westerns, revisionist
Westerns, and Australian westerns (of which there are a surprising amount). As
well trod as that genre (and sub-genres) is, Sweet Country stands out because
it’s a film about the conflict between natives and settlers that is from the
perspective of the natives (both in front of the camera and behind the camera).
Not only is the story more interested about the Aboriginal people (and those
that are stuck between two worlds as “half-castes”), but the camera itself seems to give them all of the best shots. And why wouldn't it be? In this world (ie: history), the best white people on offer are either abject racists, madmen, or well-meaning but complicit in the despoiling of Australia. While
I can’t say that Sweet Country has a rich and bold Aboriginal voice, what I can
say for certain is that it’s a movie that has a unique voice and that alone
makes it worth seeing.
The stand-out among these is Warlpiri actor Hamilton Morris,
who plays the runaway that the entire film centers around. Who has a face that
belongs to another era—namely the golden age of Westerns. That man has a face
and a carriage about him that just belongs on the big screen. And, like some of
the greats of the American Western, he isn’t much for speaking. He lets
everyone do the acting around him. Morris is an interesting choice to center
the film around him as he very clearly isn’t a seasoned actor, he brings a verisimilitude to the picture that you don't often see in movies about native people. Hamilton Morris (what a name!) feels like a fulfillment of promise of "sensitivity" regarding native people that so many other films promise and then completely fuck up.
Sam Neill is also present doing his Sam Neill thing. I’d say
more, but it’d be simpler and better for everyone if I just reminded you that
Sam Neill is the best. He's great.
One of the bolder choices that Warwick Thornton makes is
that Sweet Country is completely without non-diegetic music. From beginning to end,
the only music you hear comes from a character. It’s
It’s funny because when I think of Australian and Westerns,
I think of one of the best scored films of all time, The Proposition.
Sweet Country is a film without distractions. Instead of
making the film feel empty or lifeless, the lack of a score preserves the film’s
tone. It’s a joyless world and it’s a joyless film. To add music would be to
garnish it in some way that wouldn’t be true to the film.
It also leads to the only legitimate laugh in the entire picture. Again: Thank you, Sam Neill.
Another stand out feature of the film is the landscape
(which is maybe the only unqualified strength of Hostiles). As full of bugs and
snakes and god knows what else, Warwick Thornton (doubling as cinematographer) makes the Australian back
country look like a place that you would want to visit-- or at least a place where you could stare longingly at the Abyss in peace.
It makes you pine for a world that somehow entirely gone and
yet somehow still here. In that way, Sweet Country stacks up to the best films
the genre has to offer. Sweet Country is a nearly joyless, nearly heartless film
that fills its almost two-hour running time with a weight that matches the subject matter. It shows the Australian past as the heartless, soulless
thing that it is and because of that, it isn’t something that anybody is going
to be storming the gates to go and see. That only seems to make it even more vital as a work of art. Thinking on it, that’s probably the point.
James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and has never been south of the equator. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi.
Hostiles is the type of film I wanted to make in college. It’s
a harsh, brutalist gaze into the American west that parlays with the
complexities of violence, race, and man’s place in the universe. It’s a film
that harkens back to the classics of the genre, as well as to the great works
of western civilization. It’s a smart, well designed, well shot, and well
scored film with some terrific performances. It’s also, ultimately, overlong
and careless with its characters and its sharpest scenes are offset by mushy,
needless side plots. Hostiles is a bummer, and not for the right reasons.
Basically, we should all be glad nobody is stupid enough to give me eighty million dollars to write Cormac McCarthy fanfic.
Man. This poster is pretty good.
What Hostiles gets right is a movie that feels like the
American west. There’s a frisson to the film that isn't something I think that I’ve ever seen in films before. It's a film that properly understands the scope and scale of the
American west, which is a concept that is as hard-boiled and overdone as any location in all of cinema. And yet, in Hostiles, the sheer size of it and how small you feel within that
landscape presses down on you for every moment of the film. Hostiles is shot and lit and directed with a skill and a sensitivity
to time and space that, even in its most confounding moments, always feels significant.
The main problem with the film is that it’s forty minutes
too long. More specifically, it runs out of plot about an hour into the film.
Hostiles sets up a scenario in the first half of the film (a man protects
Indians from other Indians, with one big complication in the middle. A basic Campbellian set-up) and then,
for some reason, discards that premise (off screen, no less) in favor of a
completely different story (featuring well-known cowboy actor Ben
Foster who I am concerned might be stuck in a time warp of some variety). It’s
baffling. And it’s boring. It’s a contrivance that grinds the movie to a halt
that it never quite recovers from. As much as we all love revisionist westerns,
maybe it’s time to go back and steal one thing from the classic era, which is a
run time that makes sense.
On the plus side: The performances are top notch. Christian
Bale continues to remind us why we give a fuck about Batman and Rosamund Pike
continues to be. . . Rosamund Pike—I mean, filthy and sun-burnt Rosamund Pike,
but she can’t fool me.
Then you got Jesse Plemons as a feckless West Point graduate
(guess what his story arc is—Close! It’s that exact thing you just thought, but
duller). You also got Paul Anderson (as the character he always plays, accent and all), as well a strangely
unmalignant Stephen Lang. Rounding out all of these character actors
is Peter Mullan, the English Stephen Lang (which means he does more theater and
could also actually kill you if he wanted to). And, finally, in a currently-playing-at-the-Laemelle-Playhouse hat trick is Timothee
Chalamet [sic], who needs to give his agent a raise.
Man. This poster sucks.
Most importantly, though, Hostiles stars Wes Studi, an actor
that I’ve greatly admired for years. Part of that is because, well, he’s
talented. Another part of that is I am hard pressed to think of a less
thankless career than Wes Studi. He’s played an Indian character in just about
every western from Dances with Wolves onward—almost always as the bad guy. And
as good as he is, man, that’s gotta be exhausting. Still, it’s a testament to
his skill as an actor that even in a movie as unfocused as Hostiles, he still
stands out. Even in worse westerns (like Dances with Wolves, one of the most
profoundly shitty Best Picture winners ever), Wes Studi is a man that stands
out. I mean, just look at him.
(Also, shout-out to Adam Beach. Always good to see him
working—even if it’s also doing the same, thankless Indian roles time after time. Then again, what the fuck do I know? Maybe he's got a successful kombucha business and he's just doing these movies for laughs. Anything is possible.)
WAIT—STOP THE PRESSES.
HOLY SHIT.
The bearded sergeant with “melancholia” is the stoner kid
from Dazed and Confused! Fuck! Holy shit! Fuck! Wooooooah! That dude is awesome! Movie is still not super great, but
man, what if they got all these actors together and made something awesome?
Wouldn’t that be great?
Man. . .
Anyways. . .
Hostiles is a disappointment. As a fan of westerns, of
brutal American violence, and of good films in general, Hostiles fails to stand
out as any one of those things. While it is not without its moments or its
charms, as a film, it is an overlong and overindulgent mess. Despite the performances,
the end result is a film that meanders instead of being epic and is less
episodic than it is confused. Hostiles could have been great. Hostiles should
have been great. That’s the biggest bummer out of all of this.
James Kislingbury is a writer, a podcaster, and greatly admires his scalp. You can donate to his Patreon . You can buy the book he edited here (and on eBay). You can also follow him on Twitter. Also, if you well and truly give a shit hmu on my Paypal. Want to buy me a coffee? Get at my Ko-Fi. Happy new year!
I've put a lot of calories into telling
people why most of Tarantino's movies are garbage. Kill Bill 1 is
fun, but too long and too closely resembles a feature length music video. Kill Bill 2 is too long and no fun. Death Proof watches like a practical joke. And Inglorious Misspellings* watches like the deleted scenes of a film that never got
made. While his first three films are classics for varying reasons,
after ten years of watching an artist wander in the wilderness, I
realized that I couldn't follow him any more. I was going to go watch
movies that had stories.
Then Django Unchained came out. It felt
like a maturing of Tarantino's fixations. While all of the quirks
that he usually overindulged were still there, he managed to wrap
them all up in a film that was full of characters and had a
compelling story. It had a drive and a direction that, after the box
office failure of Jackie Brown, he seemed to resent. Yet, as much as
I loved that movie, I also realized that this was something he could
easily backslide from. He followed up Jackie Brown with Kill Bill.
The same might be true of moving from Django Unchained to The Hateful Eight.
It is with no little energy (and no
little relief) that enjoyed The Hateful Eight quite a bit.
Well, maybe “enjoyed” is the wrong
word. I enjoyed Mistress America. The Hateful Eight, I endured. It's a
movie that almost demands that you loath it. It indulges in all of
QT's worst fixation (short of women's feet), yet, in the end, it's a
film that comes together as a satisfactory whole. It is not a movie
without faults and it is certainly one that I wouldn't begrudge
anybody for loathing, but, damnit, I liked it. I really, really liked
it.
That makes me a bad person, doesn't it?
First and foremost, as with all of
Tarantino's post-Jackie Brown movies, it is too damn long**. Like
Bruce Dern's old timer, it's even satisfied to go nowhere. The first
90 minutes of the film are jam packed with long stretches of nothing.
Here's a scene of expostion. Here's a long take of people hammering
spikes into the ice that will not come back at all. Here's another
scene of folks jawing on about a whole lot of nothing (that will also
not come back in any way, shape, or form). Beneath the grizzled
visage of The Hateful Eight, is the sharp face of a Agatha Christie
chamber piece, yet it insists on indulging in its
The worst example of this is how we
have to watch a board get nailed into a door frame at least five
different times. We watch it. Every. Single. Time. We get it, QT,
it's kind of funny. The first time. Now you're just fucking with us.
Go back to filming women's feet if this is how you're going to be.
This movies doesn't so much need an editor as it needs a pathfinder.
A large, ugly man with a machete. Possibly Machete. QT can probably
get him for a song.
The other problem with the structure of
the film is that its story is bound together with the same gossamer
threads as a good Three's Company episode. It's premise makes little
sense and as the film carries on, its plot thickens, and its stakes
get raised, it make less and less sense. The story requires that
Daisy (Jennifer Jason Leigh), the bounty which the entire film revolves around stay alive,
but. . . Why? The Hangman (Kurt Russell) isn't a particularly upright man. So why is she still alive? This is stretched even thinner when we realized that almost everyone has a vested interest in her dropping dead. Yet, she doesn't.
Why? Because the sitcom requires it. This conceit is a cause for monologues and
ultraviolence. The worst of the film seems to act upon this urge.
Don't think about the logic, don't pay attention to the man behind
the curtain, look over here. We've got the guy from Justified doing a caricature of Barney Fife and that's pretty cool, right? RIGHT?
Unlike his worst films, though, it
never tips over. It knows where it's going, even if it takes the long
way around. Through some switchbacks. And then backtracks. Then takes
a nap. Then decides it would just be easier to go the easy way after
all. No, not that easy way. Come here, I'll show you. It's not like
you didn't clear your schedule for the next three hours.
I mean, how many goddamn times do I
have to see somebody put a hammer to a nail? They don't even hit
their thumb! Not once!
The Hateful Eight is also loathsome in that
it makes me find common cause with Spike Lee. I don't feel like
that's ever a good sign. This time, though, I get it, Spike. You were right. Tarantino loves using the word “nigger***” too goddamn much.
Motherfucker is in love with it. Straight up. The dude gets off on
it. Dude wants to fill a hot tub full of it and lather himself up
good with it. He loves making other people say it, too. He loves making other people say it to his friends. He has to. Otherwise, he's an idiot and he isn't that.
Of all of the things our dear director might be, he's not dumb. That might make it work.
Me twenty minutes into the film.
Which makes me wonder: Does he actually
know what this word means? Not that I get it. I'm a dumb white dude.
But, man, I feel like Spike Lee has got to have a handle on this,
right? Spoil sport, though he may be? Does Tarantino think he's
making a point? Or does he want to shock us with it? You know, prove
a point, man. Frankly, I could give a fuck. It's exhausting. What is
more is that it is boring. It's your dumb punk rock friend in high
school pushing another safety pin into his ear. Except that he's a
grown man. And the safety pin is a racial slur. Real cool, Darryl.
Now shut the fuck up and see if your brother can buy us beer.
The first n-bomb drops about ten minutes into
the film and never lets up. Ultraviolence, “bitch,” and some
really good sexual assault occurs between the opening and closing
credits, yet the n-word is there. Always. Ever present. Every scene.
Oh, and the next one? It's got even more of them. And it's needless.
It's there to prove a point that we already understand. It's there as
a replacement for actual dialogue about America or about the cultural
landscape in the post-Civil War climate. It's just the n-word.
Again and again and again. It's not clever or cute or funny. It's a
racial slur. It should mean something. Otherwise, it's an aesthetic
adornment that comes at the cost of actual meaning. That's probably
not something an artist should aim for. I don't know that being the
Goodfellas of the n-word is a goal an artist should aspire to,
either.
A friend of mine went to the reading of
The Hateful Eight and when the first use of nigger occurred, Tarantino
interrupted and pointed out that this was the first time it would
occur in the story and that there would be 200-something more. The
audience laughed at this. My friend looked around at this parliament
of honkeys, their mouths agape in laughter, and had visions of the
climax of Inglorious Bastards. At that exact moment, they'd be right
to blow us up, he said.
It never lands on the ear the way it's
supposed to and my annoyance of it only abated because, I think, I
was numb to hearing it after the first two hours. Then again, maybe
that's the point. Actually, like the drawn out nothingness that makes
up the first half of the film, I'm fairly certain it's supposed to be
alienating. Then again, maybe like a lot of QT's more clever points,
maybe I don't give a fuck.
Flaws aside, The Hateful Eight's strengths
do more than outweigh or outshine its manifold problems. The films
problems are things the rest of the film treads upon and moves past.
It says something about the quality of the rest of the film that I
can ignore something as distastful as the needless use of racial
epithets. Then again, maybe the joke is on me.
Somebody give this motherfucker a sequel.
No, not you, Eli. Never you.
I guess this is also helped along by the fact that Samuel L. Jackson is in prime form in this movie. His role as the bounty hunting Major Marquis Warren almost feels like an apology for making him the villain in Django Unchained. Warren is, to borrow a phrase, a bad motherfucker. He's cool. He's collected. He's got the best outfit. And, unlike everyone else in the movie, he actually seems interested in doing his job (which, when another character remembers that they also have a job to perform marks the point where I became fully invested in the film).
The best monologue in the film also belongs to Jackson. I won't spoilt the surprise, yet, as horrific as the story is, I can't help but laugh at it. I'm still laughing. I'm laughing because Samuel L. Jackson is laughing and who am I to disagree with him? He's a really good actor, as it turns out.
As it is with the best of Tarantino's
movies, The Hateful Eight is a film about characters. It is about people
in a premise, not a premise that requires people. The conceit of the
film, thin though it may be, never overcomes the basic human drama
that exists between these characters that Tarantino and his actors
have crafted. As the film goes on, the story becomes less about being
a mystery or a western or an exploitation movie and more about the
dynamics of these characters. Their loyalties shift. Their needs
shift. Their desires conflict. And then a lot of people die poorly.
It's a hell of a lot of fun. Or, well, you know, "fun."
Tarantino's best movies, Jackie Brown,
Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, aren't about showing off
(necessarily), but about people, characters, and place. His worst
films and his most absurd overreaches have always been about being as
loud and flamboyant as the Weinstein brothers will allow him to be.
Some artists need a tether. I don't know that Tarantino has ever had
one. Maybe that's the appeal. Who else is going to make a movie like
this? Who else can piss off this many people and make this much money
with a movie? That's fun. That's exciting. I just kind of wish I
didn't have to imagine QT writing his screenplays with one hand
because he was jerking off with the other.
Oh, also, Ennio Morricone does the score for this film. ENNIO FUCKING MORRICONE! He finally got him! Tarantino finally completed the loop!
There's a better, leaner, less
needlessly dispicable film beneath the surface of The Hateful Eight. That
movie would not be a Tarantino movie, though. For better or for
worse, this is what we have. As obnoxious as the man may be either on
screen or off (or in this case, in a voice over), he's making the
films that he wants to make. Like George Lucas, plenty have tried
making movies like him, but none have succeeded. It's nice for me to
be on the side of the argument that actually had fun with the damn
thing.
The Hateful Eight is a better movie than it
has any right to be. It's a better movie than most movies have a
right to be.
It's a fine movie to round out 2015's
Oscar season-- That is if you really want to spend nine hours
watching cowboys be the absolute worst to each other. If that sounds
like your kind of thing, then The Hateful Eight is the movie for you.
James Kislingbury is a writer. Ostensibly. He also podcasts about movies. You can support his podcast here. But you won't. Also, buy his dad's book about old time saloons from here. Writing on his own blog means he can have whatever byline he wants.
*There is no way I am looking up how to
spell that film's title “correctly.”
**Yes, Death Proof included. Also, did
you know that he went back and added scenes to the movie? If I recall
correctly it was so it could be a contender at Canne. Ugh. As if QT
couldn't be any more pretentious, the additional scenes were also
black and white. Looking back on it, I think this was the exact
moment that I realized that this director was just a man and, also,
fuck this man.
***Sorry, but we're all adults and I'm not going to talk about it without saying it. I don't have a problem with hearing it and I don't have a problem with it in movies. Again, I'm a big boy. I take issue with how this film handles it. Me. The middle-class white dude in his 20's. You know. The arbiter of what is offensive or not. I mean, I did go to college. . .
Jack Reacher is the type of action movie I can watch and enjoy with my parents.
It's simple, straight-forward and is wrapped around the same kind of familiar, procedural drive that a good Law and Order episode has. All the while it delivers the kind of justified violence that you don't have to think about for longer than the length of the scene. It's good fun and, as Mark Kermode might describe it, is perfectly fine "Tab A into slot B fair."
It's an average movie with some truly excellent moments. The car chase in the middle is excellent, so is the comic turn of most of the film's goons. Then there's Werner Herzog, collecting more money for three days of shooting than he probably has for his last three films combined (and that's a cause worth supporting). There's a lot worth liking in this film. And it's on Instant Watch. What are you doing for two hours that's so important*?
At the end of all of this, beyond whether or not it's actually a good movie or if it contributes anything to the human experience besides a mild distraction against our inevitable oblivion, Jack Reacher is a film that is paying the mortgage of the guy who wrote and directed The Way of the Gun**.
That's a cause worth supporting. The Way of the Gun is one of my favorite, little underseen movies***. I think it made all of fifteen dollars at the box office and thanks to cult heroes like Ryan Philipe and that one teacher from Boston Public(you know, the one that kissed the hot chick who wouldn't wear a bra?) it's never really burned up the midnight movie circuit.
It's a brutal, mean little movie that has the energy of a Tarantino movie and the kind of gritty violence that Sam Peckinpaugh, for all his faults, had perfected. It also has bar-none one of the best gunfights in movie history. As much as the movie might be a bit too clever and a bit too self-aware, it's worth seeing, if only, for the fantastic showdown at the end. It combines all of the realistic geographic intensity of Heat with the fun of an old fashioned Wild West shoot-out. In a perfect world we'd see more ofthis type of scene, but because less people saw it than populated Andorra, we got berserker editing and slow-mo instead. Because the world is a son of a bitch.
I also spent a New Years Eve watching The Way of the Gun watching this with a girl instead of actually doing anything fun. I'm not saying it wasn't a good choice or a proud one in the long run, but that should be a testament to how much I like that movie. Or how much of a mess my own life is. Maybe both.
By the way, I'm still looking for the jacket Benicio Del Toro wears at the end of the movie, so if anybody has any ideas as to what it is, send them my way.
THE AD BLAST
I do a podcast called White Guys, Square Glasses. . . which will be changing its name to A Quality Interruption very shortly. WGSG/A Quality Interruption is a podcast about movies. Cruz and I focus on a single film for about an hour, picking it apart, and often getting side-tracked by our dopey ideas on narrative theory. It's a good time. Our newest episode is about Near Dark, another little Peckinpaugh-esque blast of darkness and horror.
I wrote some comics. You can pick up the stories I wrote in two anthologies: Old College Comics Presents and The Freshman Fifteen. It's got my stories, along with the entries of a whole lot of other, often more talented, people. It's good fun and you're supporting indie publishing. Buy one today!
*Also, Rosamund Pike is both talented and incredibly attractive! And we're supposed to believe that Richard Jenkins somehow had a hand in producing her!
**Christopher McQuarrie is writing and directing Mission: Impossible 5? Fuck yeah. Good work, Hollywood.
***I even wrote about it way back in 2008 for my college paper. There's a Two Girls, One Cup "joke" on the opposite page. Lord. Were we ever that young?
East of West feels like a blend between
a high-concept indy comic that you saw at a convention (and would
likely never read) and the most low-brow, straight forward pulp to
fall out of Image's ass in the mid-90's. Due to what alchemy, I do
not know, the results are something rather amazing. Violent, oblique, and ambitious, and amazing.
Did I say it was amazing?
East of West tells the story of. . . I don't know what. There's a supernatural trio of murder machines (with a missing sibling) that exist in an alternate future where the United States was segmented into seven different nation and a nuclear war went down in the middle of the 21st century. Then there is a prophetic Mao Ze Dung and the president gets his head blown off. It's pretty good.
At the very least it's a fine first
issue and considering how much of this world has yet to be revealed,
I think this might end up being a very fine trade indeed.
My interest flagged slightly when the
exact identity of the Four is revealed, which takes the mysterious
power of these characters and then anchors them to one of the more
well-worn pieces of Biblical mythology. It doesn't ruin anything, it
just seems to present an answer where I didn't need or want one.
Ideally, as the story unfolds, the intent and origin of the Four will
reveal itself as something slightly different than that great
Biblical quartet.
I know I throw the word “crazy”
out quite a lot. Too much, probably. That's the trouble with not
having an editor currently and that's the trouble of having the same
thought over and over again. East of West is demonstrably a crazy
book.
I know I've said it about Nowhere Men
and I know I've said it about Prophet (hey, both are Image books,
strange. . . ). It's true with this book too.
Ignoring psychiatric diagnoses for a moment, let
me ask you a question: Is there anyone in comics doing as much varied
and exciting work as Bryan Hickman is right now?
Between The Manhattan Projects, Secret, The Red Wing, his Fantastic Four run,
and this I'm hard pressed to think of someone doing as many out-there
projects as he is-- and that's without including his mainstream comic
book work. At the risk of naming the Great Bearded One and bringing
up all that name connotes, Hickman's current position in the
industry reminds me of Alan Moore.
Time will tell if Hickman is also a bitter, old crank. We already know that he's a wizard, but that could mean anything.
You should read the first issue. It
doesn't matter if you like science fiction or westerns or. . .
whatever genre this actually is you need to buy it.
Another congenital defect of my writing
is my repetition of the phrase “This is what comic books should
be.” In this case it's still true. This is what a comic book should be. It's what the market needs more of.
At the very least I know it's what I need more of.
My Review of Django Unchained
by James Kislingbury
Django Unchained is a film directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino, famous for directing such films as My Best Friend's Birthday and Four Rooms, this time has directed a western. The film stars Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz as characters in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
Violence is used to further the plot, as well as to illicit an emotional reaction. These reactions very according to the context they are presented in.
After the beginning, but before the end there are flashbacks. Sometimes music plays in these flashbacks from other movies or eras.This is called "non-diegetic music."
In one scene Quentin Tarantino cannot act. Then the movie is twenty minutes too long and it ends with credits.
If you want to see a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino, then Django Unchained is the most directed by Quentin Tarantino movie of the year!
My first knowing exposure to Alejandro Jodorowsky
was the psychedelic western El Topo. It’s a hard movie to describe and a
harder movie to watch more than once, but if I would have to describe it, it is
about Clint Eastwood taking on the quest of Gilgamesh mixed in with the story
of Siddartha Guatama and, I don’t know, a weekend with Timothy Leary if you added. . . I don't know, it's just one hell of a movie. Yeah. That is the ticket.
It wasn’t until years after I saw that movie that
I realized Jodorowksy had transformed himself into a comic book writer (because
the word “transformed” is the entirely appropriate when it comes to men like
him) and that I had read some of his work previously.
He has a fairly storied career, at least among
European comic book fans. He created the Metabarons and went on to work with no
less than Moebeus himself (RIP) with The Incal.
Whether that is a detriment or not we can all agree that Jodorowsky's oeuvre is a unique lineage in the comic book medium. Thankfully, perhaps.
Bouncer: Raising Cain is less like The Incal and
more like one of the screenplays I half wrote nine times during my freshman
year in college. For those that are not me, that means that this book is far
less awesome than the sum of its parts and could have, at some point, used
somebody of authority and taste saying “No, get rid of this, this is gross. Please stop. You weirdo. Ick."
And so forth.
But that never seems to go down. Instead we get a crazy person's vision of a western and that, at least on paper, is a cool thing to have in existence.On paper this is a full-blooded western, a proper Western, even, especially when you consider that most of El Topo was dedicated to murdering queer yogi messiahs in the middle of the desert as I understand it. Also: Rabbits.
Anyways, the basic subject of the comic is about a young
man looking to avenge the death of his parents at the hand of an evil
Confederate brigrand. In order to accomplish this he seeks out a gunslinger who
he believes will aid him in this task. In short, it is your basic “regeneration
through violence” myth that is prevalent in the Western genre (and, well,
American history), but written by a Jewish Chilean/French jack-of-all trades-cum-madman. That’s where the wrinkles
appear.
Nothing in this story seems to exist without some
sort of corollary symbolism—or at least strangeness that creates a gap where
symbolism might be imagined. Things do not happen on a grand scale so much as
they appear on some sort of theatrical scale. It is as if Jodorowsky fears
that we’ll miss the importance of something happening if it appears to be
realistic or that we will miss that something happens when it happens. His default position—and it appears this way in all of his works, as
I understand it—is to point a high key light on the action.
People do not catch snakes, they catch three snakes. They do not find guns, they find guns from the devil (off screen). They do not get shot, they get shot and raped and decapitated. Oh, also: Illuminati symbolism (another carry over from El Topo). It might be that he isn’t just gilding things,
it might be that he is actually attempting to weave in some sort of philosophy
into his works. But if so, what?
You can see this in how the young man trains to be
a gunslinger. His attempts at becoming a gun fighter more closely resemble a
person looking to become a kung fu master or a lama than it does a shootist. It's a fun twist on the trope, if slightly contradictory. Hard though, it is to over analyze something like that when our main man's spirit animal is a legendary Scottish gunfighter who changed his name to "Butterfly."
It's at this point I would say "Yeah, it's that kind of a book," but the universe really doesn't allow for more than one of these kind of things to run wild at one time.
Adding on the fact that this young man also takes
mushrooms to reach some sort of martial enlightenment seems to make me think
that Bouncer comes across as El Topo Lite. While reading it, I wondered if some segments of Jodorowsky's abandoned Los Topos story (or stories) are what Bouncer became. It certainly feels like it. There's enough sexual violence, augery, and disabled people to pass for a sequel, even though this book seems to be set in America as opposed to some sort of a acid-washed wonderland. It wasn't until later (while reasearching this article) that I found out that El Topo Dos: Topo Mas Fuerte is actually, finally, possibly in production as we speak. And what is the title: Abel Cain.
Boom.
The real star of all of this is the artist,
Francois Boucq. He draws in panoramic landscapes and amazingly drafted details
that only really seem to exist in the European tradition of comics (or at least
how I imagine that tradition to be). His line work is really just stellar. . .
even if everyone in this book seems to be some sort of a caveman. That’s
acceptable though, when you have the closest thing to John Ford panoramic that
I’ve ever seen in comic book form. He’s a pretty swell drawer and I’m poorer
for having just found out about him.
Though he does draw a revolver in the 1870's with a swing out cylinder, which is crazy, as that wouldn't have been invented for a good long while afterwards.I mean, who does he think he's fooling?
My real problems with this book is that it seems
senselessly and bizarrely cruel. There seems to be a lot of rape and pederasty
in this book. Considering the amount of psychosexual activity in El Topo (and
just the trailer for the Holy Mountain), I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. That
movie starts with a naked eight year old, so I guess I really should have known
better.
And also I guess my problem is with how light of touch these horrors have. People murder each other because they're bad! I guess! And people rape the children of the murdered because the world is bad! You know! That's how things are. Anyways, this diamond.
I mean, what? What is going on? If you're going to drop some dark, dank shit in my lap, you had best give me a fucking reason. Cormac McCarthy is my favorite author. He understands how to lay down some well reasoned horror and by extension I think I might, as well. Alejandro Jodorowsky, on the other hand is no Cormac McCarthy (and he is no me, which is a shame, I would have a much better beard if this were the case).
Now do we avoid these sort of things because we
don’t want to put anyone in danger or do we avoid them because they’re morally
wrong? Or do we avoid them because it can easily become exploitative? I don’t
know that Jodorowsky knows. What I know is that there are large chunks of this
book that make me feel icky. Oogie, even.
Then again the violence is so hyperactive and the
plot and characters so surreal, so maybe there’s an argument for the sexuality
being as weird as it is. When it all comes down to it, regardless of the actual
reason or intention, there is only so much pederasty I am willing to put up
with in my art.
Then the big redemption at the end of the story
is. . . incest? I guess? I mean, they’re cousins and it’s olde timey, but,
really? We’re supposed to be down for this? Is that the point? Is Jodorowsky so
European as to make that his central feel good point? Do I care? There’s a lot to
unpack and that’s without the fact that the diamond that acts as the story’s
MacGuffin is hidden exactly where you think it would be. . . which I guess
makes me a sicker man that three depraved murderers.
This book creeps me out in a lot of ways. Then
again I bought it for five bucks at Vroman’s, so I do have the standing to be
too irked.
Bouncer is a fine spiritual successor to El Topo
and, fortunately, it is free of the nonsensical mysticism of that John Lennon
championed film and instead replaces it with the use of child rape as a major
plot point. Beyond that (if you can get beyond that), it has a passable story and some amazing art work. Outside
of Jonah Hex it’s hard to find a decent western comic book and Bouncer: Raising
Cain is most certainly decent.
SIDE NOTE: If you haven’t read up on Jodorowsky’s
Dune yet, then you definitely should. It’s. . . well, it’s, um, completely
fucking nuts. It has a gold toilet. Shaped like a dolphin. And the Emperor of
the Universe uses it as a throne. And that Emperor is Salvador Dali.
**And even Jonah Hex isn’t even in the West
anymore. He’s in Gotham. The hell is that about?
