Following this week’s home entertainment release of The Long Riders and Sweet Vengeance, Paul Risker looks at the evolution of the Western…
One of the intriguing characteristics of the Western is the story of its evolution. From morality tales of heroes in white hats and villains dressed in black, to Sergio Leone’s distortion and subversion of the hero archetype through Clint Eastwood’s anti-hero in the Dollars Trilogy; evolution has been implanted as a key word in the discussion of the genre.
The Blu-ray release of Walter Hill’s classic Western The Long Riders coincides with the release on DVD of one of the latest additions to the Western canon: Sweet Vengeance (a.k.a. Sweetwater). The latter is a Western in the vein of a thriller – asserted by director Logan Miller and brother and co-writer Noah – which attempts to re-invent the Western film. Whether successful is questionable, Sweet Vengeance more of a tease when it comes to the possible shades of the female protagonist, and in the right hands it is possible to see a glimmer of how the female protagonist could be a catalyst for a re-invention of one shade of the genre. More to the point it is possible to see the beguiling appeal for actress January Jones to step into the inhospitable desert with the stench of blood that will inevitably be lingering in the air as the credits roll.
Separated by a period of thirty-three years, the image may betray the difference in age but the conventions of the genre do not suffer the effects of time in quite the same way. From the flawed male characters, the forces of the social versus the anti-social, the restriction on the woman’s identity; as companion pieces – past and present – The Long Riders and Sweet Vengeance offer an interesting insight into the Western and its identity.
One can envisage the expansive geographical space of the Western, from the garden setting of The Long Riders, to the arid desert of Sweet Vengeance. The Western stretches from the West to Missouri’s Midwest; two distinct locations, despite the habit to perceive the Western’s setting as one localised space.
Prophet Josiah (Jason Isaacs) offers an interesting reflection on the role of religion within the genre. Religion is present in The Long Riders in the form of the institution of marriage: Jesse James’ and Zee’s, as well as the occasional funeral. Otherwise religion is non-existent within this world, visible only in the form of Church buildings in specific Westerns, but otherwise usurped by the emphasis on the hero and man’s propensity for violence.
In Sweet Vengeance religion is cast in a submissive role by the twisted nature and the equally fractured mind of Josiah, envisaging it as something to be exploited by evil men who share an equally intimate relationship with violence. Whilst The Long Riders shows religion lost, Sweet Vengeance features religion at the heart of the story, a catalyst for violence, demonstrating religions submissive role as servant to forces of the anti-social.
The Western is at its heart a conflict between good and evil. The Younger-James Gang, Sweet Vengeance’s eccentric and volatile Sheriff Jackson (Ed Harris) and murderous anti-heroine January Jones, suggests that if it is a conflict between good and evil within a moral play, it explores this conflict through the flawed personalities that are liberated from traditional moral restraints. They are afforded an opportunity to unleash a little of their wreck less inner Devil and exerting individual justice through violence. In so doing they undermine the emphasis on the social infrastructure which should feature communal justice. Instead the Western is a space ruled by individuals and the propensity for violence. Identity is at the heart of this conflict and the relationship of the cast of characters to the ideas of the social and the anti-social, in an environment in which true to nature’s decree: “The strongest survive.”
Director Walter Hill’s use of slow motion in The Long Rider’s was inevitably accused of being derivative of the Westerns of Sam Peckinpah. The reference to Peckinpah is particularly intriguing in regards to the previous point on the subject of violence.
Peckinpah was an advocate of the need to confront violence, and despite trying to position us to project our sympathies on the antagonists – the Younger-James Gang, The Long Riders and Sweet Vengeance thirty-three years later, are centred on the response to violence and its destructive nature no matter who wields the Grim Reaper’s scythe. Even in the service of the social it is a stain on the personality and the social fabric of a community exhibited within these two narratives.
The cast of women in The Long Rider’s at first appear a world apart from January Jones’ vengeful widow, stalking the arid desert in her purple dress gunning down all those in the service of Prophet Josiah. The roles across these two films do in fact depict the restrictive female archetypes.
In The Long Riders the women are positioned as maternal, domesticated, there to tend the home. The only other available archetype is the whore exemplified by Cole Younger’s (David Carradine) love interest; the married whore.
Sweet Vengeance to an extent attempts to reinvent the female, but rather than a woman living with the sins of her prostitute mother, Sarah is revealed to have formerly been a whore – the preferred term in the genre – herself. At first she appears to be the loyal pregnant wife – albeit she demonstrates an ability to shoot a gun – though she is split between the two archetypes. Without delay she is identified as a whore, a murderous one, though as Josiah questions, “Is there any other kind?”
Whilst the former whore stalking the landscape in her purple dress adds an interesting twist to the Western in one breath, it concludes by regressing. Sarah is marginalised by the male characters in the set-up and in the film’s conclusion she finds herself equally marginalised. Watching Sweet Vengeance it is possible to recall another powerful and noteworthy female character in the genre, herself tainted by her status as a whore: Julie Christie’s Mrs Miller in Robert Altman’s Macabe and Mrs. Miller.
The hero archetype has been afforded a healthy exploration, his identity challenged, reimagined despite such a deep rooted heritage; from which derives the genre’s evolution. If horror is a product of the male gaze, one could assert that the Western is a male dominated world, in which women are restricted to the identity of wife or whore. The Long Riders and Sweet Vengeance separated by thirty-three years depict a synchronicity on this issue of identity and how conventions can remain stuck in time.
Co-incidentally released on the same day, these two Westerns comprise an interesting double bill. An entertaining and solid Western, Sweet Vengeance fails to plough the potential depth of its narrative and so it is difficult to perceive that it will be considered a classic of the genre.
Walter Hill’s The Long Riders meanwhile is a worthy addition to Jesse James’ cinematic legacy, though likewise remains a minor entry.
Regardless both films have much to say and coupled together they are intriguing companion pieces. But then comparing them to classics such as Once Upon A Time in the West, The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and High Noon is unnecessary. The Long Riders is a bloody good Western and Sweet Vengeance possesses enough points of in pertaining to religion and the female archetype to warrant its inclusion in future discussions of the genre.
This post first appeared on Wages of Film.
Paul Risker is co-editor in chief of Wages of Film, freelance writer and contributor to Flickering Myth and Scream The Horror Magazine.
