Appaloosa: Mister, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Your Extended Metaphor
Deputy Everett Hitch, played by Viggo Mortensen, left, and Marshal Virgil Cole, played by Ed Harris, move in on an outlaw in Appaloosa, which also stars Renée Zellweger and Jeremy Irons.
First Truth: All actors want to direct. Few stars manage this transition easily. In his second outing as a director, Harris casts himself, I think justifiably, in the lead. He is without question an exceptional actor. As for his management skills, this film is, at the very least, presided over with great care.
But at the center of every actor’s directorial aspirations is a self-centered world view, a presumption to the throne of Master Story Teller. Heck, in Appaloosa (a microcosm, it would seem, of our fair nation), Ed Harris even wants to be sheriff.
Herein lies our first problem. Appaloosa is Ed’s baby, and despite some inspired performances and nuanced visual poetry, the film suffers under Harris’ introverted vision. The western is a tough genre. The format is set, the conventions mandatory. At the same time, however, it’s gotta show us something new. Westerns must constantly reinvent themselves to comment on present day America, or cast a keener eye on her past, or both.
Appaloosa is not without some innovation. Some of its best elements come from the liberties Harris takes. Our female lead is neither a hooker nor an innocent angel, for example. Renee Zellweger’s character has a brain, a healthy sex life, and no gun. Yee haw. Harris also toys with our expectations of music, landscape, and time transitions in the film.
Our director/star also keeps most of the right essentials. Sunsets, saloons, and saddles abound. The production design is shockingly good, and Viggo Mortenson, who looks like he just stepped out of a gilt-framed daguerreotype, handily steals the movie as Harris’ devoted sidekick. An accomplished horseman, Viggo’s riding sequences are inexpressibly sublime. Oh, if only they gave Oscars for authenticity!
Alas, the final mix of inclusions and omissions adds up to big ho-hum. We’ve seen most of Harris’ risks before, and this film feels like a sluggish, humorless hybrid of Unforgiven and Support Your Local Sheriff.
More importantly, for every convention he keeps, there’s a big, fat hole where a standard should be. Thanks for the gunfights and solitary lawmen (complete with moody backlighting), but come on, Ed…. No broken whiskey bottles? No climactic poker game? No gay subtext??!
Instead, we get BB-gun clichés, including laughable lines like, “I’ve known you a long time, Ring. As long as you’ve known me.”
What really interests me about Appaloosa are Jeremy Irons and Viggo Mortenson. While we’re stuck watching Harris and Zellweger flirt (badly), the supporting actors are telling the real story. But Harris’ camera doesn’t linger to find out what these two are playing at. It’s too busy capturing his personal fantasy of beating the shit out of Dick Cheney.
Which brings me to the second Truth in this mixed bag: Every one-horse town needs a two-bit tyrant to keep things running.
The reality of the old West (and, Harris argues, of the new America) is that a mean, unrepentant Boss often finds his way to the top. Once he’s there, he makes himself essential, and we find we can’t live without him. Appaloosa argues this Truth while trying to upset the order of things. Harris takes down the big fellers with the gold watch-fobs, but he neglects the aftermath of such anarchism.
Follow the allegory, replacing Jeremy Irons with any incarnation of the Gool Ol’ Boy Network, and you get very, very lost. The resolution of the film does not restore order, and Harris seems oblivious to the flaw. If anything, he creates more chaos than he started with.
In his egocentric vision of our mythic West, Ed Harris advocates emotional, violent regime change in America. But if Harris gets his wish, after the dust settles, what is this one-horse town supposed to do with itself?
Tags: appaloosa, ed harris, Film, movie review, movies, renee zellweger, viggo mortenson
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