Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1: an unashamedly old-fashioned western
Almost every cliché of the genre is lovingly excavated for the first chapter in Kevin Costner’s epic four-part western, but its traditional approach is part of its charm.
- Reviewed from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
The Cannes Film Festival has already seen one grand, largely self-funded passion project in Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis. From the urban sprawl of that baffling film, we come to the grand open spaces of Kevin Costner’s self-consciously old-fashioned western Horizon: An American Saga. This three-hour epic is the first instalment of a two-parter film and both chapters are slated to be released this summer, with another two films planned.
The setting is 1860s America. Elsewhere the Civil War rages, but in the West, expansion continues. We begin with a group of white pioneers staking out a new settlement in the wilderness, guided by little more than a handbill with an advertisement for a non-existent town called ‘Horizon’. The first of these would-be settlers are swiftly killed by the local Apaches, only to be replaced by more colonisers, this time with bigger tents and more supplies. Despite the nearby presence of an army fort, they prove just as vulnerable to a war party of indigenous peoples. A stunning, lengthy scene of massacre and siege unfolds that’s reminiscent of John Ford’s The Searchers (1956), as indeed are the mesas of the San Pedro Valley.
“Why found a town by an Apache river crossing?” Sam Worthington’s cavalry officer Lt. Trent Gephardt reasonably asks before taking some of the survivors back to the fort, including the now widowed Frances Kitteridge (Sienna Miller) and her young daughter. A posse sets out to retrieve a group of women who were kidnapped during the siege, and claim their own bloody vengeance, while others stay to rebuild the town despite the Gephardt’s warnings.
The film is well into its running time before its director/star Kevin Costner turns up in distant Montana in the role of saddle tramp and prospector Hayes Ellison. Tempted to occupy an afternoon with the feisty young sex worker, Marigold (Abbey Lee), he finds himself caught in the middle of a feud he knows nothing about involving a stolen child Marigold is caring for. The conversation between Hayes and a ne’er do well who is heading for the same address intent on the child is a perfect exercise in building tension and payoff. It’s one of the most satisfying moments in the film. Two men walk through the trees, one talking the other’s ear off with a faux bonhomie as the other lets out non-committal grunts and death lurks close to hand.
In another subplot, a wagon train winds its way along the Santa Fe Trail, led by Luke Wilson. We meet a fish-out-of-water English couple who embody the sentimental love of the wild – characters earmarked for swift and stern reeducation.
Despite the outmoded western trappings, Costner makes a few allowances for modern sensibilities. This is a film in which even the racists don’t use racist language and Chinese and indigenous peoples are portrayed in a sympathetic manner. Occasionally the dialogue used feels a little too phonetically precise, as if the actors are so concerned with authentic delivery, they neglect to sound like people talking to each other. But ultimately Horizon has no interest in the postmodern revisionism of say, HBO’s Deadwood (2004-2006) or Scott Cooper’s 2016 film Hostiles. In this sense, it is so retrograde as to circle around and become avant-garde. After all, when was the last time we saw a western which wasn’t revisionist? Here, the villains wear black hats, spit in the street and laugh like hyenas. The good are down to earth; pithy and of tough moral fibre and strong resolute character. No one says “We’ll head them off at the pass” but every other cliché is lovingly excavated, polished to a high gunmetal shine and played out. Wagons are circled; horses are rode and guns are fired.
This is no bad thing. In the oscillation of trends, superheroes might have dominated the multiplexes, but horror has long been the darling of the critical establishment. With the traditional western no longer dominant on the big screen, critical appreciation has atrophied. Costner’s material, combined with his middle American persona – bolstered by the huge success of the TV show Yellowstone (2018-2020) – might lead some to dismiss this film as a conservative throwback. But while the film is not revisionist, Costner’s vision doesn’t feel regressive in its portrayal of indigenous peoples. Much of the violence comes from the colonisers: a massacre of women and children is shown as an act of pure revenge and the only scalpings that take place are carried out by the white Americans.
Regardless of its run time, the story rarely lags. It earns the space to fill it with sumptuous vistas, and familiar faces such as Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Rooker, Tatanka Means and Danny Huston. Being the first half of a two-parter, the tale is obviously incomplete, and the film comes to a crescendo with a supercut montage previewing the coming chapter to the driving music of John Debney. The western has always been a genre about nostalgia, a document of its own twilight. Costner’s epic promises to be a golden throwback – and I mean that as a compliment.