What a great way to spend a wintry Sunday afternoon. I time-traveled to 1969's Sergio Leone movie, "Once Upon a Time in the West." 3 hours long. Maybe that's why, up to now, I've never seen this film. Check out Roger Ebert's review from '69 here.
What to add?
The movie is a myth of a myth of a myth... you finally peel back the layers of the onion and you get down to Jack Elam's scowling mug; eyes drifting in two wildly off-kilter directions at once. This movie isn't from another time and place, it's a missile from another planet, another galaxy. Or really just a rumor of a rumored missile from a rumor of a distant galaxy. It's figment of an over-boiled imagination. A deep and captivating fever dream from an Italian eccentric exploring the mythical West first conjured up by John Ford, Howard Hawks & John Huston.
It's about Death. Basically. And dirt. And sun. Mountain. Desert. Cruelty. Bad blood. Revenge. Greed. Progress. Das Kapital. Human Beings in a hard reality. The men are basically all Killers. The One Woman in the West is a Whore and a Saint. Of course. Faces. Hands. Guns. Stony hearts. Human beings scrambling around in the dust. The Noble Ones suffer, and slave, without complaint.
Oh yeah, and it's about Death in another way too. This film is so old, most, if not all, of the folks you see on screen are long gone. Which gives the movie another level of profundity, and a specialness to it. A lost time. There is even more gravity and meaning watching these actors play their parts to the hilt, knowing they are now long dead and buried. Weird too.
Loved the over the top stylization. Loved the Ennio Morricone score: Jew's harps and whistling. The spaghetti-ist of Spaghetti Westerns. Loved those long lingering shots of faces: Jack Elam, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda. The craggy, burned-out, sweating, dirty faces themselves are like stony landscapes. Rock-faces. The camera just lingers, and lingers and lingers. Fonda plays the heaviest of heavies. He walks and talks with such menace and such grace. The blackest of blackhearts. I'm sure Fonda loved the role.
Funny. Trashy. Brilliant. Absorbing. It's got a weird, convoluted plot. It takes a bit of effort to track with it. Highly recommended!
