blackthorn: elegiac

There is a small but effective subgenre of the Western which might be called the Elegiac, movies which long for times past. Kirk Douglas’ Lonely are the Brave is the best example, or John Huston’s the Misfits. There are more violent but no less poetic entries: any of Peckinpah’s Westerns, really, bears that mournful, near-desperate sense of loss, or Clint Eastwood’s long, hard look into the ethos of Western mythology, the brilliant Unforgiven.

In Mateo Gil’s quiet 2011 film Blackthorn, we have a new entrant into the field, exploring a late adventure in the old age of Butch Cassidy, escaped from the infamous showdown with the Bolivian military and quietly breeding horses on a ranch hidden in the Andes. The adventure begins when he decides to sell everything and return stateside to visit the orphaned son of Etta and Sundance.

The mood of the film is gentle and rambling and punctuated by moments of violence; to achieve it, Gil uses some grand photography and a pace set at a leisurely amble. And it is often enjoyable, which is all down to Sam Shepard in the lead, a man whose charisma has lessened not one jot across these many years, and who was surely meant to play this role (that is, an honorable old mischief-maker on horseback). He makes for marvellous company, and even sings some marvellous songs, sort of Daniel Johnston or Holy Modal Rounder style, some of which he wrote himself. (Clever Show-off Footnote: did you know that Shepard once played drums on a Holy Modal Rounders record? Indeed. On 1967's wackiest of forays into anarchic psychedelia, Indian War Whoop.)

Alas, the film never reaches its anticipated potential. Although there are moments which approach the sublime, as when a military official abandons a drunken Irish scofflaw (Stephen Rea in a lovely, haunted turn) to the mercy of the Old Gods of the Mountains, most of the dialogue just misses its target and slumps ineffectually to the ground. Eduardo Noriega feels wasted as the Spanish fugitive who tempts Cassidy from retirement, and even the English subtitles are not entirely to be trusted: one reads “goodbye and good riddance,” when the character is clearly saying, “hasta nunca,” which I suppose carries the meaning, but certainly not the spitting flair of the thing. Also, and lamentably, the flashback scenes to those salad days of Butch, Etta and Sundance never take any kind of flight, in spite of good talent involved (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau as the young Butch, for you Game of Thrones fans).

In the end, I call it a disappointment, although certainly no waste of time. This is Gil’s first foray into helming an English-language film, and his firm grasp of communicating a certain feeling-tone across the space of an entire story without sacrificing a flexible sense of dynamics bodes well for future efforts.