Modern westerns: Good, bad, ugly — and different

A horse neighs, and the saloon doors swing open. Cowboy boots walk in, one macho step after another. The Stetson enters. The barman, apron in place, slides a frothy glass of beer to the counter. Somewhere, somebody cocks a gun. A rooster squawks.

It is easy to spot a western, which is, after all, the most recognisable of Hollywood film genres. Yet, it is so versatile that different regions have developed their own versions — from Italy’s spaghetti westerns to Mexico’s charros, and, closer home, Indo-westerns such as Sholay. The flexible film genre — malleable essentially because the rules are simple: Good guy beats baddie, wins girl — has been reinterpreted hundreds of times over the years. It has been mixed with other genres as well, such as sci-fi and romance.

Clearly, those who like their westerns can’t have enough of them.

Not surprisingly, millions of fans are glued to Netflix these days, watching the Coen Brothers’ film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs . Westerns with a twist are being warmly embraced as well. Gay cowboys as a theme has been tried and tested in movies such as Brokeback Mountain — with overwhelming success. Now cowboys are making way for women. Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts , for instance, has been described not just as the world’s first Satay western, but Indonesia’s feminist answer to the wild west.

The old macho men-ruled genre is getting a feminist twist. Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled , which won her an award at the Cannes film festival last year, overturns the genre with its treatment of a former Clint Eastwood film. The original Don Siegel film has a wounded Union soldier recovering in an all-woman seminary, while the civil war is on in the South. He woos the women, who vie for his attention, filled with jealousy and prodded by deceit. Her tongue-in-cheek version, on the other hand, gives the film a humane touch. While passions are invoked, Coppola’s women are characters of their own. It also has an all-star cast of Nicole Kidman, Kirsten Dunst and Colin Farrell. The Coen Brothers’ True Grit , a 2010 remake of a 1969 film of the same name, turned the damsel-in-distress theme on its head, too, with Hailee Steinfeld’s memorable portrayal of Mattie Ross, bringing out the character’s wit, courage and resilience.

On the anvil is Girl with No Name , a feminist western by director Tanya Wexler (maker of the 2011 film Hysteria , starring Maggie Gyllenhaal, about the invention of the female sex toy, the vibrator). The western, incidentally, is going to be produced as a 40-page comic, too.

The Coen Brothers, reports say, had been toying with the idea of making westerns ever since their 2007 hit No Country for Old Men . Buster Scruggs , recently released on streaming platform Netflix, is 135 minutes long, and comprises six tales from a fictitious book of the same name. It tells the sordid tale of someone’s death in each episode. The filmmakers have paid an ode to the western genre in several ways — from plot characteristics to shooting a part of the film with the classic red sand backdrop of the Monument Valley, famous for western veteran John Ford’s sweeping long shots.

The film was originally intended as a six-episode series. All the stories are set in 19th century America, in the post-Civil War era. In its bid to replicate an authentic classic western from the black-and-white film era, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ends up being a good study — and an ironic reflection — of the genre itself. There are literal and metaphorical allusions to the western style in this elaborate ode. The third story is about a young and physically challenged artist called Harrison who performs Ozymandias and Cain and Abel in the company of an impresario, played by Liam Neeson. It is a reminder to the audience of the role of the western as a morality tale.

Characters such as the travellers in a coach in the last short, ‘The Mortal Remains’, or a bank robber in ‘Near Algodones’ are instantly recognisable as classic western plot points, even if the fallouts are markedly different. The singing cowboy misanthrope Buster Scruggs, who figures in the opening tale of the same name, underlines the Coen Brothers’ signature absurdist comedy.

The film is a quintessential western. Nothing makes a film’s soul traditionally western than scenes with the hero in a quiet moment of reflection against the backdrop of sand dunes and sunsets. The scenery underscores the cowboy’s existential crises, with his philosophical monologues and the directors’ long shots highlighting his insignificance amidst wild nature that overpowers and overshadows everything else.

The film has those moments, but they are not marked by solitude, like in the old classics. In story after story, the moments are filled with conversations — among a caravan full of people, between a cowboy and his mate, a man on a rope and a stranger, or a pair of lovers. The conversations are painfully specific and in the present, introducing crucial turns where the story moves forward.

For real: Chloé Zhao’s second film The Rider follows the life of a real-life cowboy after he’s had a serious rodeo accident

The characters are unaware of their space and time in history; that is the audience’s job, to spot the delicious irony. This is as Coen Brothers as it gets.

Other westerns such as The Rider (2017) fall under the category of experimental modern western film, made differently. Chloé Zhao’s second film as a director follows the life of a real-life cowboy after he’s had a serious rodeo accident.

The Beijing-born filmmaker’s debut movie was Song My Brothers Taught Me , which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival (2015) and was honoured at Cannes. That was a family drama set in Pine Ridge Reservation, a small town. A young man named Johnny has to make a choice. He has to deal with an absentee cowboy father’s death, an elder brother in jail, and a sister and mother to care for. Or, he can leave all that behind and opt for a life in Los Angeles, with his childhood sweetheart.

In The Rider , the filmmaker revisits Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, but this time, she chooses to write a visual essay on real-life cowboys, old-fashioned in the modern world. Zhao’s lead protagonist Brady works in a supermarket as a cashier since being a rodeo doesn’t bring in enough money anymore. This film doesn’t have the grandeur of a true-blue western drama, though the stakes are not low. The tragedies are quiet and unsung, and Zhao underscores that real life is not fiction. Brady, recovering from a rodeo accident, visits his friend Lane regularly at the hospital. He spends his afternoons with Lane, who has lost his speech and movement due to his injuries. They watch their rodeo acts that preceded the accident that injured Lane. They communicate with each other through charades, with Brady completing Lane’s sentences for him. The gripping rodeo scenes are interspersed with Brady lying calmly in his bed, recovering from his own head injury, or working at the convenience store under neon lights.

In an interview with The Guardian , Zhao explains the film’s backdrop. “The cattle industry is now completely monopolised by the big meat industry, which is horrible, and so the small ranches are disappearing. If you raise your cattle in a factory lot, why would you need cowboys? These young guys, they’re on Facebook, they have YouTube channels, they’re listening to hip-hop — they’re trying to figure out what it means to be a modern-day cowboy.”

Hollywood’s biggest names have been trying out the genre, too. Quentin Tarantino entered the conflict-ridden territory of plantation slavery-themed westerns with Django Unchained , a thriller with stellar performances by Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. The director, however, was criticised for treating the theme of slavery flippantly in the interests of its gripping plot.

In 2015, Steven Spielberg told The Hollywood Reporter in an interview that the westerns, like the superhero films, would always make a comeback. “We were around when the western died and there will be a time when the superhero movie goes the way of the western. It doesn’t mean there won’t be another occasion where the western comes back and the superhero movie someday returns,” he said.

Except that the western never went away. It just evolved to suit the times.

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