The label “revisionist Western” has been lobbed around for so long, and in so many movies, that it seems to have lost most of its bite.
After all, it’s pretty hard to call a Western “revisionist” if it represents the same old vision of the American frontier, stained with the blood and salty tears of prototypical masculine icons. Sure, Christian Bale feels really bad about all that genocide in a film like “Hostiles,” but only because the camera lingers on him longer than usual. It’s the same old story, the same old song and dance.
So when David and Nathan Zellner’s “Damsel” begins with a world-weary preacher, played by Robert Forster, admitting that the American west is pointless and stupid, and then strips himself naked and walks off to die in the desert, it’s a refreshing change of pace. And when the film segues into a literal song and dance,...
After all, it’s pretty hard to call a Western “revisionist” if it represents the same old vision of the American frontier, stained with the blood and salty tears of prototypical masculine icons. Sure, Christian Bale feels really bad about all that genocide in a film like “Hostiles,” but only because the camera lingers on him longer than usual. It’s the same old story, the same old song and dance.
So when David and Nathan Zellner’s “Damsel” begins with a world-weary preacher, played by Robert Forster, admitting that the American west is pointless and stupid, and then strips himself naked and walks off to die in the desert, it’s a refreshing change of pace. And when the film segues into a literal song and dance,...
- 6/21/2018
- by William Bibbiani
- The Wrap
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