#19
Post
by therewillbeblus » Wed May 05, 2021 11:22 pm
Revisiting this affirms its status as one of the most interesting westerns, existing in a purgatory state between the classicalism of Ford and the revisionism of Peckinpah. What makes this such a peculiar and intoxicating film is that its strengths are largely not thematic in traditional western terms, but instead lie in pulsating images that elude defined characterization, which in addition to a clunky meandering and unexpected narrative, creates a psychological portrait of confusion to mimic the characters' own evasive yet pining psychologies. Here we get the bold canvased visuals of men against landscapes, coded morality in the bullet-in-hand gesture of friendship from Brando, and other Fordian borrowings down to the humor in eccentric townie dynamics during the festival. However, vengeance cannot be simplified or cathartic for our hero when morality is revealed to be relative outside of those codes, and the brazen savagery of revisionism is depicted as meaningless as opposed to its purgative norm, reflective of the vacuous equity between morals and violence.
It's a far cry from the classic theme of order harnessing a Hobbesian society, when that moral order is established from the start in a sparked action from the ignorant Brando in saving his father figure and friend with intimacy and stoicism, and the ensuing serpentine narrative demonstrates how without said order our characters are alienated but not any more aggressive because of their isolation from it. Just lost, despondent, and existentially drained. No wonder Dad takes his comfortable safe position as sheriff- it's another form of self-delusion to evade that alienation with shiny objects, but no closer to truth or meaning.
Perhaps this is what actually infuriates Brando and leads him to his vengeance, that his teachings from Dad about a moral code were untrue, making his education and formative years of identity development a lie. I realize this is reaching outside the obvious surface, but I'm not convinced that Brando is actually driven to action by Dad's betrayal at the outset. I'm not even convinced that Brando knows what his plans are, if he's being honest or manipulative with Louisa, and my reason is simply that Brando's stares and mannerisms insinuate the disposition of a man who doesn't know himself why he's doing what he's doing, but all he knows is that he feels strong emotions that are uncomfortable. The regressively barbaric scenes in the film stem from overwhelming emotion funneled into the default secondary emotion of men: Anger. But anger almost always begins with a deeper, less tangible pathos, and that's the air these characters breathe- so thick it practically fogs the atmosphere in every frame.
I believe that Brando's turning point is not plotting in prison, but that the moment where Dad lies about the horses in present day is when he actually breaks down to surrender to entertain a violent plan vs. a moral one. They're both equally vapid and meaningless, but when Dad proves that even with time to think, outside of a potentially-excusable fight/flight moment of turnin' yellow, not to mention a deeper assimilation into the 'moral' world of order, he is still violating that morality- the code he taught Brando- it doubles down on its meaninglessness and insults Brando's worth as a man, a son, a human being. He has been robbed of more than time, but of his own identity- taken by the man who helped him craft it. At least with revenge he can transform this intangible loss into tangible anger and have a chance at emotional release, though this has been evidenced as futile already.
As Brando says to Dad, he would have shot him on the spot if his mind was made up that way, but when Dad lies to his face we see Brando's ego shatter behind his facade. Brando taking his time, infuriating his gang with indecisiveness, is emblematic of a man who is fighting with himself over what to do. I don't believe he's torn because he feels two logical or moral choices so strongly, but because he cannot see the conclusive value in either, or any, option- and he's smart and thoughtful and sensitive enough to exercise any opportunity to avoid the fatalism of a nihilistic worldview that haunts him.
Once this gestation of time passes, Brando openly admits that he is seeking vengeance because of the betrayal and prison time during his confession to Louisa, but I think these are lies to himself that he must revert back to in the same self-delusion that acted as fuel for him to resiliently survive prison. I love how when Louisa proposes that Brando thinks killing Dad will "make you a man," he replies, "I don't know about that, but I know that's what kept me going all those years." It's deeply tragic that after all that musing, thinking, and feeling in desperation, he couldn't find a reason not to embrace anger, to even define what self-actualization is for him- because that reason isn't there. For all the beautiful, warm shots in this film is an ironic core of philosophical ice, but the film isn't taking a nihilistic stance. Instead the film posits that it's not in philosophy that we find meaning, but in our capacity to feel genuine emotion. It doesn't necessarily provide order, often quite the opposite, but in the absence of secure codes of morality one needs to rely on the nebulous yet fervent energy between the self and the environment- or that warm embrace with another from a safe distance, like Brando's beautiful goodbye with Chico, or his time with Louisa. But does any of this "make him a man?" I think that's what Brando has been staring off and trying to figure, and feel, out while coming up empty. In the end, shooting a man in the back in a cheap trick is not meditated on for its violation of a moral code, but translated nonchalantly just as a moral shootout with rules and respect would be portrayed. It's all the same when respect means nothing.
There is even a glimmer of hope when Brando and Chico share a sense of morality, and can express it briefly, but it's still bitterly proven fruitless when put into practice in the very next scene. However, having that morality to hold onto oneself, to be the carrier of your own code flexibly in relation to the treacherous world, is possibly meaningful in a vacuum, however fleeting. Maybe. It's hard to say. No wonder Brando is so conflicted. Thank God the film doesn't take any easy route to deliver a thesis warranting relief, and allows that discord to simply exist without an answer. This is possibly the closest a western has come to expressing the emotional dysregulation born and immobilized from the insoluble mysteries of real life. It's like an Antonioni film from the same era, set in the wild west, and reading it this way is even more tragic: that perhaps it's not that we've outgrown our morals but that they never really did us any good or had much value to begin with.
