Bite the Bullet

Reworking the spaghetti western one strand at a time, Quentin Tarantino updates the Italian sub-genre for the modern age, 2012's Django Unchained, an epic tale of lost love and hopeful reunion. . . and, of course, bloody revenge. Following a charmingly charismatic and cunning bounty hunter. . . who used to be a dentist, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) is a master planner who has a flair for the dramatic. Tracking down a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx), he needs the man to help him finger his next set of criminals (setting him free for the task). Without giving away what happens on the first bounty Django joins him on, it is the quintessential mix of Tarantino humour combined with bloody violence – a scene of utter perfection.

There is a fascinating duality to the old west. Still mostly unsullied, the natural landscape was peaceful, serene, carrying with it an almost quiet solemnity (a new life filled with hope), yet, in the blink of an eye, violence could rear its ugly head, leaving behind a long lasting wake of pain, hurt, melancholy, and anger. An existential study of the clash of cultures, and the grey areas that sit in the large milieu between war and peace, Scott Cooper’s 2017 western Hostiles is a film that pays tribute to the past whilst speaking to the present unrest found in the world today. Centred around a man of conviction, stoic military veteran Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale), he has made his living off of slaughtering the native hordes that disrupt America’s Manifest Destiny. Called into the office of his superior, Col. Abraham Biggs (Stephen Lang), early one morning, he is less than pleased to learn that his final assignment (before retiring) will be to transport a cancer-riddled Cheyenne war chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), and his family, including son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), from New Mexico to his homelands of Montana – at the bequest of President Harrison. At first willing to disobey orders on his principles (Yellow Hawk was responsible for killing many of his colleagues and friends), the Colonel threatens to court-martial him and remove his pension – basically forcing him to take the job.

We often think of the western as being set in the sunbaked, sand-filled deserts of the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood epics. Turning this idea on its head, Robert Altman takes us into the frontier lands of the wet and snowy northwest (filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada), an equally picturesque yet no less hostile terrain, in the 1971 film McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Riding into town with his bushy beard and no less hairy fur coat, John McCabe (Warren Beatty) is a businessman looking for his next big opportunity. He sees the tiny, half-built town of Presbyterian Church (just over one hundred people) not as a hindrance, but as the perfect location to set up a one stop saloon, gambling den and whorehouse. Hiring some local men, they get to work while he heads off to procure the working girls – purchasing some lower class ladies for the gruff, rough, and equally low class frontier men of the area.

Perhaps one of the most iconic introductions to a character finds Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name riding into a dry, vile town, wearing the now legendary garb – dust covered poncho, brown gaucho-style hat, black jeans, spurs, and a Colt in his trusty holster (the stubby cigars will come a little later). Stopping for a drink of water, he takes in the violent, melancholic locale, where people gaze at him in a distrusting and ominous way through their wooden shutters, and children are shot at in the street by thuggish individuals. The first of what would become the "Dollars Trilogy" (or "The Man with No Name Trilogy"), A Fistful of Dollars, despite its now celebrated status, was poorly received by most North American and British critics when originally released. Once again showing how time is a fickle thing, the term Spaghetti Western (this type of motion picture), was first coined as a negative, disparaging term (ridiculing the European product for being of poorer quality to their American counterparts) – though today, it is generally thought of as an endearing and highly positive term. Directed by Sergio Leone, its unique visual style (beautifully framed close-ups that differ from the typical Hollywood use of the technique, as well as his then unorthodox use of viewpoint that places us in the moment over Eastwood’s gun), and attempt to move away from the traditional American tropes of the western, is now viewed as the beginning of the rejuvenation of the historic genre.