Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1

Costner's Folly, Chapter 2 ("Nobody Knows Anything")

or

Going For the Fences
 

You've got to hand it to Kevin Costner. He takes chances. He's parlayed his television success on "Yellowstone" to make a movie he's been dreaming of for a couple of decades, in times both fallow and flush, cast it with a steady stream of great character actors who've never passed onto the A-list, split it into two chapters (although hopefully there will be more) and released the first one—in which various story-lines do not intersect—as a 3-hour set-up...the sum of which would spell box-office poison to a movie-going audience that wants its product pre-digested and easily grasped like fast-food.

 

And who can blame him? He's done it before. When he was making it, Dances with Wolves was being derided as "Costner's Folly" for making a Western when they weren't fashionable, for it's extensive location shooting, for the supposed grandiosity of writing, directing, producing and starring in it, for it's planned use of sub-titles, and for its cost overruns. 

 

But, as William Goldman wrote, nobody in Hollywood knows anything. Dances with Wolves became a box-office smash, its elegaic, and unconventionally seditious, story becoming a hit with audiences and garnering the Best Picture Oscar, beating out Goodfellas (which some may argue was a mistake, but, to my mind, really wasn't).

So, here's "Coster's Folly" Chapter Two, the ungainly titled Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1, with a story by Mark Kasdan (who co-wrote Silverado, a favorite of mine), Costner and Jon Baird, photographed by J. Michael Muro, who shot Costner's lovely Open Range.

 

And it's great. Simply great.

For a 3-hour movie, it sails right by, packed to the sprockets with detail, period and story-wise, never seeming to waste a frame in telling three...four? five?...stories about a plot of land in the San Pedro Valley in the American west that may—or may not —be available for homesteading, and the people who are attracted to the promise of it (whether it is true or not) and the people already living there who take it for what it is. 

 

There are the first white settlers, there to survey and parcel, but as they're alone in the wilderness and, unbeknownst to them, surveying Apache hunting grounds, they soon fall victim to a war party. Their graves are the first semi-permanent structures of Horizon. They won't be the last.

But, the pattern will remain the same. By 1863, there is a well-established colony on the site, across the river from those three original graves. They, too, are attacked by Apache, leaving a limited number of survivors: some, like Frances Kittridge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter, Elizabeth (Georgia MacPhail) will take shelter at nearby Fort Gallant; others, like the boy who rode to the fort to get help, Russell (Etienne Kellici) form a hunting party to track down the Apache who burned down the encampment.

That attack has caused a dispute between the leader of the war party, Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) and the leader Tuayeseh (Gregory Cruz), resulting in the younger man splitting from the tribe, taking one of Tuayeseh's sons with him. 

In Montana, James Sykes (Charles Halford) is shot by Lucy (Jena Malone), who takes her son David and flees for the Wyoming territory. Sykes' sons Junior (Jon Beavers) and Caleb (Jamie Campbell Bower) are sent to find her and the child. They catch up with her where she now goes by the name Ellen, married to hopeful lands-trader Walter Childs and living with a local prostitute Marybelle (Abbey Lee). When the Sykes boys show up, there is a confrontation between the vicious Caleb and saddle-tramp Hayes Ellison (Costner), a potential customer of Marybelle's. She and Hayes and the child escape town to avoid repercussions of the murder.

Also heading for Horizon is a wagon train, moving along the Santa Fe Trail, under the auspices of Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), who is having trouble keeping the eclectic group of settlers (including a naive British couple and the family of Frances Kittridge's late husband) of the mind that, although they may be headed for a paradise, they're not there yet, and water and team-spirit are in short supply in a desert.

In the mix are interesting characters, like the leaders of the Army detachment at Ft. Gallant, who are straight out of John Ford's Cavalry films: Lt. Trent Gephart (Sam Worthington, the most effective performance I've seen of his), who's a pragmatic soldier and would just as soon have settlers somewhere else and the "indigenous" (as he calls them) left to their land to keep the peace, a sentiment acknowledged but considered historically unrealistic by Gallant's leader, Col. Albert Houghton (Danny Huston) and his sergeant major, Thomas Riordan (Michael Rooker, in a slightly less garrulous version of the parts Victor McLaglan played in Ford films). One likes these people and you get the feeling everybody's doing the best they can under the conditions and the inevitability of time.

That's a novel's worth of people and a lot of stories and one suspects everybody's going to converge in Horizon (the town itself will probably end up being the focus of the series), their characters already established and with ensuing complications in the offing—Costner has previews of the next chapter at the end of this one and my appetite for it is whetted.

Despite the obvious nods towards Ford, Horizon: an American Saga, so far, feels more in the vein of the sprawling How the West was Won, but, in character, more like "Lonesome Dove", where individuals weave in and out of the fabric of the narrative, and sometimes—as in life—are never to be seen again in an indifferent Universe, lost in the stream of History. Costner may love his Westerns, but he acknowledges there's less romanticism to it when the survival rate hovers around 50%.

It was in Ford's film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where a reporter states "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Ford's career peeled back veneers of western legend varnish in his films and in his later work stripped off more layers of his own earlier myth-making. Costner goes even farther, taking into account the grubbier myths of Leone and Peckinpah (and Eastwood) with his hard-scrabble porous towns in need of light and cleaning and extermination. He goes a step further by putting back all the practicalities of the settler experience that Ford cut out—the burying of the dead, the scarcity of water, the bugs and critters, the difficulty of killing a man with ball-shot, the necessity of self-sustainment by farming, the ritual of hard work, more important community matters than tea-dances and ceremonies.

If there's anything more to wish for, for me, it would be that there's more of it (despite others quibbling about length). A couple transition sequences seem to have been excised just to speed things along that might not have added much but may have smoothed a passage of time.

It's still early days, but one gets the sense that Costner will be making a point that the beauty of the West that we admire may not be just a matter of the dirt and stone carved by time and tide but also foundationed by the bones of those who walked before us. 

Becket (1964)

Becket (Peter Glenville, 1964) 

 

"In the year 1066, William the Conqueror crossed from France with his Norman army and conquered the Saxons of Britain at the Battle of Hastings. Henry II, his great grandson, continued to rule over the oppressed Saxon peasants, backed by the swords of his Barons and by the power of his imported Norman clergy."

Why bother about religion when there's so much wenching to be done? Wenching and bellowing at the TOP of your lungs while you're at it! King Henry II (Peter O'Toole, who would play the role again a few years later in The Lion In Winter) is having a bit of trouble with his Archbishop of Canterbury—who objects to his lands being taxed. So when the elderly Archbishop dies ("He'll be much more use to God than he ever was to me"), Henry appoints as his replacement his old friend, fellow debaucher, and new chancellor Thomas Becket (Richard Burton)—"He's read books, you know, it's amazing. He's drunk and wenched his way through London but he's thinking all the time." A cozy and advantageous arrangement for both parties. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Well, Becket, actually. And it's a matter of going right. Thomas, being a Saxon—actually, he was Norman, the original playwright Jean Anoulih got it wrong—causes some grief to Henry's Court, when he should be winning his people over to the King's side. And then Becket finds religion as archbishop and gets all self-righteous on Henry, taking the Church's stance on conflicts with the King.

This turn of events—and character—does not sit well with the "perennially adolescent" first Plantagenet King, and in a drunken rage shouts, "Can no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?" and he has barons who are perfectly willing to take on the job. Becket, in death, becomes a folk-hero to the Saxons, and Henry, in his remorse, and for political expediency, has himself flogged and petitions for Becket's sainthood. 

Am I giving anything away? The story's only 800 years old! O'Toole and Burton have a fine time playing "Can you top this?" with each other in scene after scene, Burton controlled and stentorian and O'Toole indulgent and capering. Add John Gielgud as the King of France and you have some of the best British actors doing top-notch work rolling around some very rich dialogue abetted by some glorious cinematography by Geoffrey Unsworth. Yes, it's talky (in the best way), but with this cast, it sure is entertaining conversation.

These days, one can't help but be reminded of the stark contrast between the story of Becket and the far-in-the-future States in that Kings have the prerogative of "offing" their opponents and it is only Henry's largese and his own self-loathing that makes him accept a punishment for his actions, narcissist though he may be. Oh, those were the good old days.

Thelma (2024)

A "Going-Back-To-The-Buffet" Situation

or

Is a Bad Mother... (Shut Your Mouth!)

One suspects that I'm the perfect demographic for Thelma*, seeing as I'm on the waning edge of the Boomers and having looked at life from both sides now. One sees mentors and peers and Alphabet-gens in the cast and nods one's head in sage recognition. 

If only theater seats could rock it would be perfect.

 

I've seen movies about scammers and hackers and other denizens of the sight-unseen chicanery of cyber-criminality, which if my google search is correct is 2328 times a day, 8 million in a year. That's a lot of possible stories to tell, but at some point, one becomes numb to the stories as they seem so commonplace these days, whether its victims are corporations, infrastructures, or the most common among us. No one seems safe except those off the grid or those without cards of any kind, I.D. or credit/debit. And out rush to make things so "convenient" seems to have made us more vulnerable, oftentimes, ironically, with our enthusiastic permission.

When was the last time you read the "Terms and Conditions?"

But, I can't recall—except implied for heist movies, government conspiracy films, or spy flicks—of anyone telling the story about a victim of one of these things. But, then...my memory isn't what it used to be. Movies either, for that matter.

Thelma puts a face on the news stories of oldsters being conned out of their legitimately-earned savings and that face is June Squibb's, all 94 years of it, where she finally has a lead-role—and executive produces at the same time, no doubt for back-end compensation (way to go, June!)—playing the title character, who not only is getting "up there", she's reached the top and is looking down. She has a little trouble navigating new technology—she needs the help of her grandson, Daniel (Fred Hechinger), who has his own issues, but loving gramms isn't one of them—she is a perpetual quilter, is ambulatory, and can take of herself. Not only physically but also in attitude. She plays mah-johngg on the computer and hates wearing that Life-Alert button. Her memory for trivia isn't good, but she's still sharp as a tack—her motivation hasn't dulled at all. She's a little creaky, but when she has a goal...

One day she gets a phone call. It's Daniel. He's been in an accident and he's in jail. He needs $10,000 to get out. She's given an address to a lawyer and she's to mail the money immediately to spring Danny. She calls her daughter Gail (Parker Posey), but she's in a therapy session and lets it go to voice-mail. Thelma can't drive, but gets a cab, gathers the money up and sends it. Gail gets the voice-mail, panics and calls Daniel—he's asleep—calls her husband Alan (Clark Gregg) and everybody tries to call Thelma, goes to her place and are alarmed that she's not there! When everybody manages to get to the same place, they all are relieved that Danny is safe...but, who called Thelma? They come to the realization that she's been scammed, but filing a police report does no good.

There is much discussion of what to do about Thelma—Danny feels responsible, but doesn't think he's good enough to take care of her and Alan and Gail, who are the most helicoptering of parents start to consider whether Thelma should be put in a home. Thelma, however, has one thing on her mind—getting the money back. The kids want to let it go, but not her, and while they're deciding what their next steps are going to be, Thelma decides what she's going to do. She has the address of where she sent the money, and all she needs to do is get some wheels. The kids aren't going to help, so she calls as many friends as she can, only to find that everybody on her contact list is either dead or incapacitated. 

Finally, she calls her friend Ben (the late, great Richard Roundtree) who has an electric scooter and they embark on a journey across L.A. to find her money and get it back. Hilarity...and a substantial dose of what the hurdles the elderly face in this ultra-teched but indifferent world. It could be maudlin, it could be a shallow romp about "those frisky oldsters", but it deftly negotiates those pit-falls and turns into something funnier and a bit more life-affirming. Thelma's kids tend to lean toward caricature, but in the hands of Gregg and Posey, less damage is done toward the proceedings, and Roundtree and Squibb are delightful all the way through.

It's a better-than-you'd-think version of a geriatric heist movie, and, if you see it, stick around for the credits for a little surprise as to its inspiration. It'll bring a smile to your face and a warmth to your heart. And that never gets old.

* No, it's not Selma with a lisp.