(2013. dir: Gore Verbinski) As Marguerite Churchill pointed out in 1936's scare-propaganda piece Legion of Terror, only a coward hides behind a mask to do his violence. Unless, Tonto would add, one cannot trust the men in power. All authority figures in this particular white men's Old West, from the military (embodied in a Custeresque officer well-played by Barry Pepper) to the more prominent villains to the apparently affable politician (played, as always, to perfection by that Master of his Craft Stephen Root), the men in power are all corruptible, and therefore corrupted.
It's not fair to compare it to Pirates of the Caribbean, I know, so I'll do it quickly then move on. Alright, this is no Pirates (as, indeed, nor were the last three installments in the Pirates franchise), and the wonderful moments here coalesce into vastly good entertainment without reaching the swaggering magnificence of that first film. But that was an enchanted moment, never to be repeated. It's possible that the backbone of that film (aka: the Disneyland ride, a piece of awe and wonder in anyone's childhood) was a uniquely valuable touchstone to which the story could return whenever it needed inspiration, whereas the old Lone Ranger stories are possibly impossibly outdated, or perhaps just not sufficiently focused to inspire the perfect story.
But magic there is, of a slightly variant stripe. As in Pirates, the musical score is a powerful one, and well used. The Rossini overture (the Lone Ranger Theme Song) is touched upon once early, then left for the Grand Finale, where it is used to rousing success. I admit there are a few early stunts which are straight out Captain Jack Sparrow's playbook, but it doesn't matter. There's joie de vivre here, not cheap cadging. And in this troubling era of soul-withering overkill in climactic action sequences (Avengers, and Superman, and Jason Bourne, I'm glaring at all of you right now), this climactic scene is so filled with joy and crazy inventiveness that it actually gets better, and funnier, the more times you watch it.
Many anachronistic pieces of the Lone Ranger story are explained away as the whim of a crazy man: Tonto, actually, who is a Comanche touched in the head by a tragedy from his childhood. It works very well, Tonto being a sort of half-crazed clown-warrior on a mission, talking to horses and watching the natural world skew itself out of balance from the white man's Manifest Destiny: here we have a world in which horses stand in trees and rabbits have become fearsome cannibals. All of the whimsical and near-supernatural bits, which together comprise the bulk of this movie's delight, are made possible by a framing device in which an ancient Tonto, part of an Old West sideshow, tells his story to a boy. The frame clunks some, but it allows Verbinski and company to enjoy a wonderful amount of freedom in time, spending just a moment here on the bank robbery before jumping forward to a battle or back to a piece of exposition.
As expected, Depp is the shining star of the piece, adroitly exercising his ongoing druthers for the Buster-Keatonesque, that strange and deadpan physical humor. The unique and incomparable Helena Bonham-Carter is wasted in a cartoon role (it is suggested that the bad guy ate her leg; now she sports from her hip a Rose-McGowan-inspired-ivory-encased rifle instead. What?!). Tom Wilkinson as the aristocrat-villain is given very little room in which to play; William Fichtner as the heart-eating mega-villain has some better luck with his screen-time. James Badge Dale excels in his secondary turn as the Right Brother. Armie Hammer is the tenderfoot lawyer learning the hard way how to be a superhero, and he brings heart and humor along with his imposing physical presence and amiable good looks. Monument Valley is there like an old friend, maybe a half of it green-screened, but a good chunk of it was filmed onsite (you can tell by the haze in the background. There's always a haze over Monument Valley, as far as I could tell). Another nice touch is the use of the timepiece as a central metaphor for the white man's tyrannical view of reality. Whenever the bad white men want to bribe someone into subservience, they are offered a silver or gold watch as their Judas Gift. (Lone Ranger: "Who would trade a watch for a handful of birdseed?" Tonto: "A bird cannot tell time, Kimosabe.")
And what about the possible backlash (possible? inevitable. You just know those Professors of Native American Studies have been sharpening their quills since the first trailers emerged) to Depp's non-traditional garb and presentation? Objections are rendered moot by a simple factor: that every anomaly in Tonto's get-up is explained by the moment of crisis which formed him, -- the crow, the broken watch, the everlasting war-paint. And is not the way to sidestep political correctness to make a character a unique individual? A thing which the filmmakers have most certainly done.
There's magic in this story, for all its faults. It's like a fairy tale, in which magic and the mundane intersect to create a world of unpredictable delight. My boyfriend's son thought that the movie's ambition was too large, and robbed it of otherwise-possible success: that it tried to be more than one film at a time, and the two films were at war, one with the other. I give it credit for taking on a stretch of legend which is a serious minefield of possible offense, then leaping those barricades of political correctness which drain the lifeblood from so many characters these days (particularly in theatre: modern theatre is entering a sort of zombiehood in which characters refuse to spring to life, being forced to utter self-righteous platitudes instead of speaking true. But I digress.) And when I saw it the second time, with my expectations lowered to a reasonable level, I enjoyed it twice as much. Verbinski is wonderful at filming action, making it clear, and making it funny at the same time, or sometimes poignant, as when the Comaches ("We are already ghosts,") make their courageous, end-battle descent down the hillside toward the Gatling guns of the white man.
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