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DeSemler: Appaloosa (2008)

 


In my review of Russell Crowe’s Poker Face, I noted my fascination with Australian actor-directors. Ed Harris is not an Australian, but he’s an actor-director, and has worked with enough Australian talent before and behind the camera: a quick survey of his filmography reveals Peter Weir, Russell Crowe, Gregor Jordan, Nicole Kidman, Sam Worthington, and Dean Semler—the DP of Appaloosa (2008) and subject of this month of DUF—among his collaborators. 

Harris has directed two features: biopic Pollock and Western Appaloosa. It speaks to some of my ingrained prejudices about genre that if Pollock didn’t exist, I would say Appaloosa was tailor-made for Harris: sturdy, muscular, economical. But because Pollock exists—not a film I particularly like, but one that does an admirable job of grappling with its complicated real-life protagonist—Appaloosa felt initially like a bit of a lark, a piece of fun boy's adventure dress-up. In the days since my viewing, however, the film’s particular strengths—its smart incremental characterization, nuanced handling of Old West gender dynamics, and prophesying portrait of a smug Trumpian criminal entrepreneur wheeling his way to the top—have resonated.

Unrelated to the Sidney J. Furie-helmed, Marlon Brando-starring 1966 film of the same name, Harris’s Appaloosa is adapted from a novel by Robert B. Parker, the first in a series of books headlined by characters Virgil Cole and Everett Rich (Parker also created the character Jesse Stone, essayed on screen by Tom Selleck in multiple telemovies). Cole and Hitch (Harris and Viggo Mortensen) are appointed sheriff and deputy of the New Mexico town Appaloosa to thwart the nefarious activities of rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons) and his men. In the process, Cole falls for the new-in-town widow Allie French (Renee Zellweger).

Kevin Costner’s Open Range, released a few years earlier, is an obvious point of comparison for Appaloosa: both feature a bro-mantic duo (there Costner and Robert Duvall) standing up against an abusive land baron of British descent (there Michael Gambon), with a well-cast romantic interest (there Annette Benning) thrown in. Whilst I prefer Costner’s elegant bloat to Harris’s leaner storytelling, said leaner storytelling is nothing to sniff at. Visually, Semler does outstanding work as DP as per usual, but here the romantic glow of his earlier Westerns (Dances with Wolves, Young Guns, City Slickers, The Alamo) is replaced with a more bleached aesthetic, with a touch of Chiaroscuro in the lightning and composition, befitting the film’s more urban milieu and psychological focus.

Ben 

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