Flix Chick

by Michel Comte

TORONTO (AFP) - A lack of Western movies at the Toronto film festival this week, with one beautifully shot exception, David Von Ancken’s “Seraphim Falls,” begs the question: where have all the cowboys gone?

Von Ancken’s first feature film, starring Irish-born actors Liam Neeson and Pierce Brosnan in a tale of revenge and redemption, is the only film in this genre at the Oscar precursor and the last of a sporadic few in recent years.

Some suggest that US President George W. Bush, often described as a cowboy for his foreign policies and whose popularity has waned in his second term, has hurt the burly cowboy image and the Wild West genre.

Others point to a young breed of Hollywood producers who do not identify with the genre, as well as slumping ticket sales, and fears of spiraling production costs for features mostly shot outdoors and vulnerable to the whims of Mother Nature.

“George Bush is a fake cowboy with very little substance,” Von Ancken told AFP. “This film is not about the president clearing brush on his ranch for a photo op, it’s about two men linked by their rage.”

“There is even an anti-war sentiment in this film because the two main characters are trying to work out their feelings about their war-time experiences in a post US-civil war era,” he noted.

“I think there is a reservoir of people interested in the genre who just don’t get to feed in that trough very often,” he insisted.

“But there is a big risk in making them, particularly if it’s an expensive production, because most of the action is filmed outdoors and you risk being washed out by the elements. Most studios will not take that inherent risk,” he said. “We filmed 47 out of 48 days outside with no cover.”

Film festival co-director Noah Cowan said only a handful of Westerns were offered to be shown here, and only one was chosen because audiences are no longer enthralled with cowboys.

The genre is “old-fashioned and young Hollywood doesn’t see its future in the Western,” he said.

“There are still a lot of liberals in the mountains and on the plains and if cowboy films are what they wanted to see, they’d go see them,” Cowan said. “But they’re not, and so producers are not financing them.”

But, “the iconography of being a cowboy remains a very potent symbol in American life regardless of their feelings towards
President Bush,” he added.

A few scenes in a handful of films shown at the festival poke fun at the cowboy stereotype.

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen as Kazakh reporter Borat Sagdiyev in a Stetson in the film “Borat Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan” tries to greet a homophobic cowboy at a rodeo with a kiss on both cheeks, but is rebuffed.

And, actor Forest Whitaker in “The Last King of Scotland” re-enacts Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s much-publicized lassoing of his ministers at a party.

In Von Ancken’s film, Neeson and Brosnan follow in the footsteps of their gritty hero, actor Clint Eastwood, in “Unforgiven” (1992) which saw men begging instead of dying stoically, and irredeemable characters executing revenge instead of good guys saving the day.

Classic Westerns, such as those by John Ford, relied on simple storytelling: a white hat represents the good guy, a black hat represents the bad guy, and a showdown on a deserted street is likely to resolve their differences.

Since the 1970s, several films have undermined this premise, including Kevin Costner’s “Dances with Wolves” (1990) which presented Native Americans as good and the US Cavalry as bad.

Coincidentally, Costner was in Toronto this week to promote Andrew Davis’ film “The Guardian,” not part of the festival, with co-star Ashton Kutcher.

“Seraphim Falls” continues the trend of “inverted Westerns”.

“It is a Western, but not a purist Western,” said Von Ancken. “Pierce is the bad guy, but his character is more layered. It’s a parable about violence begetting violence, but also a chase movie from the snow-covered Rocky Mountains to the desert.”

The hunt begins with Gideon (Brosnan) evading capture by Colonel Morsman Carver (Neeson) while painfully trying to cut gunshot out of his arm. Brosnan’s brilliant performance was felt by Toronto audiences who winced and screamed with him at its world premiere here.

“It was cold. You didn’t have to act cold,” Brosnan said about shooting the scene in minus 36 degrees Celsius weather.