Skip to main content

The Noble Savage

By


I thought this was an interesting take on Lone Ranger, as the writer delves into the history of subversive westerns in American cinema, noting how Gore Verbinski's movie differs from Quentin Tarrantino's Django in its much more ambiguous take on history.  Of course, neither hold a candle to Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah, but it is nice to see anti-Westerns and anti-histories making a comeback.

Johnny Depp is no stranger to the anti-Western.  I thought he was fantastic in Dead Man, which had a very limited release because Jim Jarmusch refused to change the ending to suit Miramax tastes.  To some degree, it seems Depp tried to reprise this role, giving Tonto a similar controlling force as Nobody in Dead Man, only Gary Farmer gave the character a fine ironic touch.  But, it was a game effort on Depp's part, even if the movie fell flat at the box office.

Americans prefer their Western heroes writ large, and have a hard time wrapping their thoughts around anti-heroes.  Even John Wayne's Ethan Edwards remains an enigma in devoted John Wayne fans' minds, because Ethan doesn't fit comfortably into the heroic image of the West.

Leone took John Ford one step, maybe even two or three steps, forward in casting Henry Fonda as the notorious Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, arguably the best of all anti-Westerns.  Ironically, Fonda may have very well been cast as Ethan if he hadn't had a falling out with John Ford.

Verbinski seems to draw on all these films in creating Lone Ranger.  You can easily spot many visual references, but there is a number of other references in the story. His Pirate movies also rise above standard swashbuckler tales in that he draws on a wide body of themes, not content to deal with the standard narrative.  I found myself particularly intrigued with the second film in the series, Dead Man's Chest, because he got into the concept of Manifest Destiny and gave his villainous Davy Jones a much deeper character than we usually see in these films.  Unfortunately, Verbinski didn't successfully close the deal in At World's End, but then I think this was because he was forced to throw too many new characters into the mix.

To some degree, Hollywood now seems to be embracing these darker characters and story lines, I suppose because teenagers today don't want standard narratives and identify themselves with these darker characters.  Otherwise, there would be no money to be made from it.  Even if Sergio Leone made Clint Eastwood, his films were not embraced at the time.  It was only in retrospect that critics came to appreciate Leone's unique take on the American Western.

Fortunately, Lone Ranger is far away from the original television series.

Comments

  1. avrdsNovember 14, 2013 at 11:45 PM

    I regret not seeing this when it was in town (for about 5 days ...). That photo is classic.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonDecember 11, 2013 at 4:43 PM

    I watched the first half the other day and found myself enjoying it although it is essentially a pastiche of 60s and 70s Westerns ranging from Little Big Man to My Name is Nobody. No great arcing story that I can see here, but look forward to the second half. Quite a long movie!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order

By
A quarter of a century, however, is time enough to dispel some of the myths that have accumulated around the crisis of the early Thirties and the emergence of the New Deal. There is, for example, the myth that world conditions rather than domestic errors and extravagances were entirely responsible for the depression. There is the myth that the depression was already over, as a consequence of the ministrations of the Hoover Administration, and that it was the loss of confidence resulting from the election of Roosevelt that gave it new life. There is the myth that the roots of what was good in the New Deal were in the Hoover Administration - that Hoover had actually inaugurated the era of government responsibility for the health of the economy and the society. There is the contrasting myth (for myths do not require inner consistency) that the New Deal was alien in origins and in philosophy; that - as Mr. Hoover put it - its philosophy was "the same philosophy of government which...
170 comments
Read more