Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Audiophilander (A) on February 01, 2010 at 09:50:40

In Reply to: RE: Westerns to cinema are like hot dogs to dining posted by Victor Khomenko on January 29, 2010 at 11:50:14

... but that's what makes westerns stick to your ribs better than the so much of the overhyped "serious" art house cuisine. Westerns as a genre run the gamut, they can be as simple as a "B" picture shoot-'em-up or as complex and varied as any situation cinema with intellectual pretensions, but one thing they all westerns have in common: they are fundamentally American.

High Noon boring? Wash your mouth out with lye soap! Have you ever considered what The Wild Bunch represents or discussed what Sam Peckinpah's transitional western genre films were about? Contemporary western films often deal with the harsh realities of adjusting to a constantly changing world and delve into the not-so-B&W aspects of loyalty, heroism and villainy rather than the overly simplified and glorified legends.

I disagree with you completely when you suggest that the western has to be "fairly dumb to be truly enjoyable." That sounds more like a personal issue or perhaps just a lack of knowledge on the subject. To the contrary, some of the more involving westerns feature compelling anti-heros, those on the fence or at a turning point in their lives. These are ethical concepts that transcend genre.

What westerns can do better than any other type of reality based film is to represent the shifting lifestyles between colonial expansionism and industrialized America, the uprooting of indigenous tribes, hardship, lawlessness, frontier justice, opportunism and disappointment, cultural and racial divisions. These are universal themes, but they can often be explored in a western setting (removed from our own) with much more poignancy than in a contemporary one.

AuPh