The Western and the Importance of Complexity

Many action films today take the stereotypes of the Western, but yet miss the whole point of the genre. An example of this mistaken notion is that the filmmakers continually show more and more action and violence in their films. The Western was, in its day, the form of folklore and epic storytelling for movie audiences, much in the same way that the older generation heard tall tales or read about them. If a person would want to go even farther back then that in history, in order to see where the Western form stems from, they would have to go back to ancient mythology when epics where told to children. These epics actually have more of a relation to the Western than the actual West being portrayed in those films. The Western was never summarized in a better fashion than by film critic Pauline Kael when she stated that, “The original Stagecoach had a mixture of reverie and reverence about the American past that made the picture seem almost folk art; we wanted to believe it even if we didn’t.” It’s that sense of escapism, mixed in with the social connotations of the films, which makes them still classics till this day.

The Western helped spread a cultural representative norm of America to foreign cultures, as well as people who lived in America as well. What made these films so “American” was the fact that they always dealt with a certain main character archetype. This archetype involved, “…the doomed hero—the man without a future because the way of life is changing, the frontier is vanishing, and the sheriff and the schoolteacher are representatives of progress and a new order. The hero is the living antique who represents the best of the old order just as it is disappearing.” Typically this hero was played by John Wayne, and his robust strapping swagger set the standard for the ways in which actors played cowboy heroes. Also, the convention of the lawless land, and of how someone has to set things straight in his town by getting the job done himself, was a convention that seemed to stick whenever foreign cultures viewed how America operated.

The problem with the Western form was the fact that after awhile the films became repetitious, and the once ingenious ideas in the Western genre became merely conventions. How many times can an audience watch the same old movie that merely has a new film crew working on it? After awhile, the mythology of the classic Western hero can look pretty tiresome, especially if he’s played by the same person i.e John Wayne or whomever. It wasn’t particularly consoling considering that the setting never changed as well. Also, the later Westerns became a sort of bastardization of the old “classic” westerns which had a beautiful simplistic purity to them. These newer Westerns even had the same stars as the old ones, and yet the films were more rotten to the core. For example, a classic Western actor like Kirk Douglas now changed in characterization in order to fit in with the lousiness of the particular movie that he was starring in. Pauline Kael gave an example when she stated that, “Douglas in The War Wagon has metamorphosed back into his post-World War II character—the heel. He’s now the too smart Westerner, mercenary and untrustworthy in a way the audience is supposed to like. His Westerner is a swinger—a wisecracking fancy talker with intentionally anachronistic modern attitudes.” Also, filmmakers like John Ford were getting too old to adequately film their movies. The once beautiful landscapes of the American West had to be transposed with indoor locations because Ford was becoming too old to film outdoors; a perfect example of this is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Even John Wayne was beginning to show his age.

These flaws in later Westerns ultimately inadvertently helped end the genre.

If it weren’t for certain maverick films, or at least maverick at the time, like Yojimbo and The Wild Bunch then the Western may have ended in a much earlier period than it ultimately did. What makes these two particular movies so distinctive, and so vital, is the fact that they used the Western conventions and then purposefully stood them on their head, and actually added complexity to the depleted genre. A filmmaker like Kurosawa had to have had an abundant amount of effrontery in him in order to make a film like Yojimbo. He would also have to have a certain amount of impudence in him in order to shoot a scene like the one in Yojimbo when Toshiro Mifune is up on the tower watching the two factions ruling the town fight each other, and laughing in the process. This scene would be a normal one in any other Western; the assumption would be that Mifune is the villain in the film, but the fact that he is the main character is quite startling. The fact that the location of this particular Western is Japan may have something to do with this role reversal.

The fact that this film has a different location setting opposed to the American West is why Yojimbo is so refreshing upon first viewing. Also, the whole comic situation and the way the story is constructed, is much more complex than say a typical Western would be; the movie is highly ambiguous. Tshiro Mifune is a loner type who used to be a Feudal Samurai, but now is without a master. That’s ok with him though; this man likes his freedom because now he can choose his own way in which to make a profit. Once he walks into a deserted lawless town, which is being fought for by two illicit clans, he decides to play both groups against each other. How this man attempts to do this is by working for both of the clans in different intervals and giving them false information that will ultimately benefit him because he makes a profit while they kill each other. This Westerner hero is very different from the ones in American movies, and this is because he only looks out for himself. Consequently, he’s more realistic and comical. The audience can actually laugh at his actions, rather than be in awe at the way that he administers violence. In the American Western films, this violence assumes the gross improbable construction of justice. Toshiro Mifune’s character does not suffer fools easily, and neither does the filmmaker Kurosawa. Pauline Kael wrote about this in her review of Yojimbo when she stated that, “Kurosawa slashes the screen with action, and liberates us from the pretensions of our ‘serious’ Westerns. After all those long, lean-hipped walks across the screen with Cooper or Fonda (the man who knows how to use a gun is, by movie convention, the man without an ass), we are restored to sanity by Mifune’s heroic personal characteristic—a titanic shoulder twitch.”

What’s ironic about Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch is the fact that, yes the conventions of the Western have been altered and enhanced like in Yojimbo, except that in this movie the murderous outlaws have the same heroic grandeur that the Western hero of the early “classics” of the genre had. Peckinpah’s sociological point, no matter how controversial it may seem, actually proves fairly cogent. The film’s thesis is that if the “heroic” character of the “classic” Western is allowed to be depicted in a heroic vein, so should the outlaw because that Westerner hero of the past also killed people outside of the jurisdiction of the law.

The Wild Bunch is a very conflicted film for mainly two reasons. The first is that the criminals and killers in the movie, otherwise known as Pike’s group, are treated with reverence throughout the film. It would be presumed that many would be outraged by this, but for the most part this fact seems to slip past audience’s perceptions. This audience response is fascinating because they accept the view of the film without question. Maybe audiences always resented the “classic” Western heroes of the past without fully realizing it. After all, how could a man who killed people almost as if it were sport in duel after duel (the only reason the character is “heroic” is because he didn’t terrorize the town, and he didn’t shoot his opponent in the back; he would always ask them to a duel), be viewed as a virtuous considerate man? Peckinpah’s switching of convention actually proves to make more sense than say if he merely showed the outlaw as being a virtuous considerate man. Instead, Pike and the rest of the Wild Bunch are anything but considerate, and yet they are heroic because they stick by their principles and stay together as a group, without betraying or sacrificing or forgetting about one another, until their very end. Peckinpah is not stating to the audience that the Bunch in his film were good, but merely that we as people have reverences that we were not aware of towards the criminal. Peckinpah wants his film audience to own up to their responses, and this is why the film is so shocking.

The violence in the film is the second example of conflict in The Wild Bunch. The movie is very violent, and yet that violence has a purpose. It is that audiences do relish violence without realizing it. Peckinpah wanted to explore this in his film, so he made the violence that appears in The Wild Bunch, along with the action sequences, highly virtuosic and beautiful. Certain scenes like the beginning robbery and the scene when Thornton and his gang, which goes after Pike’s gang, are tricked into believing that the criminals are on a bridge, when in reality bombs are planted that make that bridge collapse, almost feel like ballet because they are executed in slow motion. These particular scenes are beautiful and are made to contrast with the violent ending sequence, when the audience is resentful of their own responses to the earlier scenes. Peckinpah makes the audience ashamed that they ever relished violence to begin with. The violence in the film is what made The Wild Bunch so controversial, and yet the violence works hand in hand with the sociological comments that I stated earlier, and it’s ironic that many don’t realize this. They merely attack the violence and not the controversial statements in the film. It’s also ironic, and somewhat terrifying, that many do not realize that the film is an attack on violence, rather than being a glorification of it.

The conclusion that I have come to is that the only way for the Western genre to continue, for any genre to continue, is to make films that conflict with the notions of the genre. Complexity is the only way for any genre to prosper, and this is why the western has been so non-existent for many years now. There are new Westerns, but they are very falsely complex and very negative in spirit. They are not as rich as they are made out to appear; not as rich as a Yojimbo or a Wild Bunch. In other words, a filmmaker should make a different kind of movie from say a Wild Bunch, because the audaciousness of that film has already been done and can never be repeated. There have to be other ways to continue the folklore and tradition of the genre.

The one thing that has to remain constant in order for the American Western to prosper is that the films have to have heroic grandeur. Without that quality there is simply negativity, which is what occurs in No Country For Old Men.