Hollywood close to perfecting the western

Westerns are so rarely action vehicles anymore. Yes, they have action in them, but so more often nowadays they have deeper motives that can’t be cheapened or invalidated with extraneous gunplay.

Modern westerns are metaphorical journeys, or simply a scorched landscape by which these journeys can sprawl. Recall Unforgiven or The Wild Bunch, westerns that seemed self-aware of their time and place in their setting’s histories. The characters aren’t so much playing for a plot, but reacting to the time in which they live and how it has changed their perception of violence and decency. Last year’s 3:10 to Yuma drew on similar principles. Then there’s Open Range, Kevin Costner’s realist cowboy movie that focused not on the bloody gunfight but the drama that frames it like rustic punctuation. Consider also one of my favorite movies of 2006, The Proposition, which allowed us to acknowledge the painful betrayal of two brothers in a land without rules or laws — only a strict, and often amoral, code of conduct existed. Sergio Leone made his westerns into great operas of our time, framing his leads into claustrophobic close-ups amid the howls and hauntings of Ennio Morricone’s scores.

Someday soon the genre will again be cheapened back into action nonsense — Die Hard in the desert — but until then please consider these films as masterpieces of the genre, the oldest genre in cinematic history.

Falling into this topic — classy and unforgettable westerns — is a film released early last year to a quiet applause and poor box office receipts. By and large it was neglected, but after viewing it on DVD this past week it reminds me why westerns are so important. The film, Seraphim Falls, is an explosive adventure through the Old West. Although not quite El Topo or anything else by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Seraphim Falls is a surreal and nearly abstract journey across several frontiers. The people we meet along the way exist partly in reality and partly in a dream, and sometimes we’re not so sure of either. At one point a character seems to not exist at all, yet she offers the necessary tools to move the characters forward … and they accept.

The movie stars Pierce Brosnan and Liam Neeson. They have names, but I’m tempted not to print them only because they’re barely ever said. In fact, very little at all is said by Brosnan, and Neeson repeats the same line several times — “You will not be paid if he is dead.” Neeson is the hunter; Brosnan the hunted. The movie begins with Brosnan setting up camp in the high woods amid a blanket of snow. A shot rings out and the chase is on. The hunter has four others with him; the hunted is alone. Remember the Super Posse from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? That’s pretty much all of Seraphim Falls: it is a cat-and-mouse chase that lasts the entire film. The chase begins so abruptly that its sudden movement is jolting. Nothing is explained to mark the beginning and nothing is said to mark its end. The film simply comes and goes; beginning in emptiness and ending in emptiness — a most efficient picture.

As Brosnan, caked in mud throughout, runs down snow-covered mountains, across vast plains, through steaming deserts and amid settlements of various kinds, he is relentlessly inventive: he carves out traps for those who prey on him, steals horses, pays off Indians and summarily ends the lives of those who threaten his path. He is often without a horse and gun, but several times he finds ways to reacquire them. Neeson is not required to be as resourceful, but he knows how to track, which allows him to cross entire landscapes following an exact trail of bent grass or brushed dirt. He lunges forward with a momentum that suggests this chase is his personal vendetta. Eventually, flashbacks reveal the reason for the chase and its violent push forward.

Seraphim is a chase, yet it finds time to stop and offer strange encounters: A terse father and his two children, a wanted man with a temper, a congregation of Christians in need of food and water, an Indian with wise prose who controls a tiny puddle of water and a gang of railroad workers who don’t take kindly to horse thieves. One of the more controversial characters is that of a woman in a tiny cart who sells a cure-all elixir. She provides the two men with a bullet each as the gap between them shrinks. As she rides away her wagon says her name is Louise C. Fair. It doesn’t take too much of a stretch to read “Lucifer.”

The casting is fantastic. The elixir woman is played fiendishly by Anjelica Huston. Other characters are played by the great creepo Tom Noonan (Manhunter), impish Kevin J. O’Conner (There Will Be Blood) and Native American actor Wes Studi (Last of the Mohicans). Michael Wincott (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), whose geologically painted voice radiates with each word, plays one of the posse. And Brosnan and Neeson are exceptional as well. Brosnan, still fresh out of a Bond franchise, is very convincing with his character’s plight. Much of his dialogue is reduced to shrieks and yells, like when he falls into an icy river or when he strips his clothes in the snow to remove a bullet from a gaping wound in his arm. Neeson holds his secrets close to his chest, but more is revealed as his chase grows more desperate. His flashbacks reveal that his entire family was killed in the confusing days after the Civil War. Anger controls him, yet he does something very curious at the end that seems to change the meaning of what we’ve just seen. It’s not a twist ending, but it comes close.

I should also mention the beautiful cinematography by gifted cameraman John Toll, who succeeds at not only capturing magnificent shots of snowy mountains, forests and deserts, but manages to fit them all into one film with a seamless energy. I can't think of a better movie in recent memory that was filmed in real snow and on a real mountain.

Seraphim Falls occasionally guides its plot by the hand with too much force — a bullet conundrum is solved too quickly, a horse thief is discovered with no evidence against him, a henchman is knocked unconscious too easily — but because some of the scenes are surreal and almost allegorical we can suspend disbelief for the film’s target effect.

This is by no means a perfect western — some would argue it’s not a western at all except for the horses — but Seraphim Falls is a wonderful film, one that adds another element to a genre that hasn’t made a misstep in a very long time. Let’s hope it doesn’t stumble anytime soon.