Open Range
Review
by : Eric Barker
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Starring: Robert
Duvall (Boss Spearman), Kevin Costner (Charley Waite),
Annette Bening (Sue Barlow)
Written
by: Craig Storper, from novel The Open Range
Men by Lauran Paine
Co-Produced
and Directed by: Kevin Costner
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A
small-time cattleman and his crew run afoul of a wealthy land
owner intent on their destruction.
An elegiac
film about a vanishing way of life, Kevin Costner’s
Open Range is the most old-fashioned, emotionally
honest Western anyone has dared to make in at least thirty
years, maybe longer. Not even Costner’s own Dances
with Wolves (1990), which seemed to prove that a worn-out
mythology of the West could perform new tricks, showed this
much bald respect for a genre which long ago had its day in
the sun. In our era of pervasively unearned irony and myopic
self-reference, the fact Costner even wanted to make this
film, nevermind convincing others to follow him, makes Open
Range one of the most daring movies anyone will attempt
in 2003, a Quixotic gesture defying the gods of demography.
The screenplay
is a throwback to a time before Eastwood, before Sam Peckinpah
and Sergio Leone, when John Ford and Howard Hawks still reigned
over the mature, adult branch of the genre and Westerns focused,
unselfconsciously, on basic conflicts in the European mindset
that produced the Civil War and Manifest Destiny. The classic
Western drew constant oppositions between Civilization and
Wilderness, Homesteaders and Wanderers, Action and Intellect,
Trust and Betrayal, Chaos and Order. It was a wholly American
mythology with a sharp moral focus, disdaining muddy equivocations
about Right and Wrong, continually setting up and resolving,
in dramatic terms, what is an essentially irresolvable dilemma:
the eternal struggle between individual desire and the good
of the community.
From its
title to its last line, Open Range draws wholeheartedly
from the classic Western template, refusing to let go of any
convention merely because it’s clichéd. “Boss”
(played by sublime Everyman Robert Duvall) is a Crusty-But-Benign
elder plainsman taking a small herd to market, looking to
settle down, who finds himself under attack from an Evil Landowner.
His Loyal Partner Charley (Costner) is a taciturn Man-With-A-Past
who defers to him in all matters, though they fight “like
an old married couple,” and who falls in love with a
Beautiful-But-Strong prairie spinster named Sue (Annette Bening),
who in turn represents the good side of Civilization, the
proof that values such as hard work and honesty can be maintained
without perpetual wandering.
The great
surprise of the film, as with all of Costner’s best
work either as an actor or as a multi-hyphenate, is how much
in earnest it is. Open Range treats its archetypal
situations with all the seriousness of My Darling Clementine
(Ford, 1946) or Shane (George Stevens, 1953), and
finds its humor in charming quirks of character, as when the
film slows to observe Duvall, the rough hewn cowpoke, fumbling
with a tea cup in a lady‘s dining room. Even when Costner
allows himself to satirize genre conventions, the humor is
gentle and skewed, sneaking up on audience expectations, like
the film’s running joke about the sanctity of dogs in
American life.
Another
Costner strength freely displayed in Open Range is
his generosity. Surrounding himself with first rate movie
stars like Duvall and Bening is the smartest thing he’s
done in years, and he gives them equal and sometimes greater
screen time than he gives himself, using major talent to shape
an excellent ensemble. Duvall, in fact, gets top billing,
even though Costner is considered the bigger box-office draw,
a measure of the filmmaker‘s respect for an actor who
consistently lifts the caliber of any film in which he appears.
Like any
Western worth its salt, Open Range moves toward the
time-honored shoot-out for its finale, and here Costner delivers
a memorable action sequence that is one part historical fidelity
-- most real shoot-outs were quick and nasty, confusing and
bloody confrontations with no clear victor -- and one part
show biz, going on for several minutes beyond the plausibility
mark, as nearly all contemporary Hollywood films do. But it
is clear the director has done his homework (probably while
researching the lesser Wyatt Earp, 1994), and the
climax of Open Range is about as tense and exciting
as they come. It’s just too bad he couldn’t have
taken another page from John Ford’s book, and kept the
action in its proper place, along with the other flourishes.
Caveats
or no, Open Range is an honorable piece of moviemaking,
completely lacking modern cynicism and genuinely versed in
its own faded genre, an excellent comeback vehicle for a movie
star/director who still has things to show us. Within the
film’s very standard framework, Costner fills each scene
with wonderful details about a time so long past us now, it
seems like a foreign land, which is precisely what made Dances
With Wolves an instant classic (only that film also had an
extraordinary script). Made for a paltry $25 million, pocket
change for a major studio release these days, Open Range
won’t bring Westerns permanently back into the cultural
fold -- in its absence, the genre’s conventions have
already been absorbed in other styles of American cinema like
the cop melodrama and the gangster film -- but it might restore
some dignity to the Costner persona. If only his next film
is this plain and smart, Open Range might restore
his credibility as a director, too.
Breathtaking widescreen
photography in the virginal wilderness of Calgary.
Notes:
SEEN IT BEFORE
MAYBE, BUT NOT FOR A LONG TIME: Visually and thematically,
Costner pays tribute to several old-time masters besides Ford
and Stevens. Cf. The quirks of male bonding versus the treatment
of women in any Howard Hawks’ film, but especially Red
River (1949), the climactic showdown and the fears of the
townsfolk in Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon (1952), the
narrative twists in Anthony Mann’s films with James
Stewart, i.e. The Naked Spur (1953).
THE DARNED DOG:
is named after Costner’s development company, TIG Productions.
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