Directors Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall worked together more than 60 years ago to present to the viewers how America developed as it headed west, towards the Pacific Ocean. ‘How The West Was Won’, was one big attempt. Done through the three strip Cinerama process, the film had an exceptionally high ensemble cast with actor names like James Stewart, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Henry Fonda, Thelma Ritter among others, and was produced on a canvas that seemed to eclipse the dimensions of the country. The themes it attempts to portray can be summed up in the stories of white people conquest of land, the land’s original inhabitants, and of each other. It is hindered because of scale, conflicting perspectives, and its severe political undertones. And still, there is a kind of mysticism to the sheer nerve of trying to do it.
After all, for actor Kevin Costner, the whole film must have determinatively been in his sight while making his bold and powerful directorial comeback, ‘Horizon: An American Saga- Chapter 1’ 3 hour piece of art trying to make peace with the past but unfortunately certain problems which plagued the previous film too.
Too many cliches have been employed in “Horizon” which is not attempting to be a deconstruction of the Western, quite the opposite in fact. Moreover, it is also a slow pace in terms of the multitude of plots that are intertwined and which start very late in the narrative such that Costner appears on screen after one hour of the film.
Horizon’s first third in its entirety is no more than a long exposition and given the context of this structure, is quite unfortunate in trying to play out like a feature film on its own. Everything. Dima’s library of clips and characters in the first volume covering the two films he managed to shoot over one month (eight or ten other segments) works reasonably well it teases what’s needed, but not what’s necessary here.
Instead, Chapter One slowly shutters in San Pedro Valley in 1859. An insatiably more savage tribe of Apache warriors kills a family that comes looking for a land by a creek. Nevertheless, these fatalities do very little to stop the inflow of people the settlers fully intend to erect a township protected by rifles. The murderer of the inhabitants lurks in the night. The next day during a ball, the emperor wheeled out the attackers: a chaotic, bloody image of a slaughter, or, rather, much more accurately, at all times including lighted houses and exaggerated shouts, the shots are so ordinary and straightforward that it is completely indifferent to breathing. A number of civilians escape the destruction of the settlement. Some go out in a rage and hunt their foes in pairs. And Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail) and her mother Frances (Sienna Miller) they are carried away from the union army by some lieutenant.
Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) at least manages to escape the madness, for a while, by withdrawing to the base camp held within the fort.
Given all of the violent images we are exposed to from the beginning of the first hour, it is hard to feel PPP for these characters. They are unfamiliar individuals and their relationships with one another are not very well developed or just become too informal toward the end of the picture and so on. So before long, we are taken to the Wyoming Territory and some new characters are brought into play: Costner finally appears as Hayes Ellison, a horse trader among other things. He gets acquainted with local whore Marigold (a Fractured Abbey Lee) who is being chased by a band of gunmen because of a secret she possesses. A minor pulse is given to the drama when Costner appears, grizzly voice and all. But even when he does appear, his presence is not that of a centrepiece. As if to say, Costner the filmmaker, the writer (who co-wrote the script with Jon Baird), understands just how much of a challenge it is to introduce all of his main players. Hence the scope of his presence has to be minimal and much to the detriment of the film.
The last arc, which was given in the last hour, is the climax: It involves a wagon train moving through the Montana territory with an amazing variety of settlers. This L.A. group is led by none other than Luke Wilson who is the most impressive in this ensemble as well. He is more than a shadow of a Western archetype actor, as the American character in him is quite rounded and essential to the series that reveals weakness.
Because no matter how biased Costner appears trying to give equal treatment to both Indigenous and settler characters equally, this is not how it is in actuality. Of course, we get introduced to the mothers of Apache warriors, however, their onscreen presence becomes less and less interesting while the presence of white heroes is largely. It also doesn’t help that the women of white ethnicity on American territories in most cases are completely monosyllabic and shining as they have not been dirtied even a little bit and are viewed as beautiful in the middle of rough settings. In this sense, the score also remains revealing: It’s a lavish, orchestral grandiose score typical of Old Hollywood and, naturally, mostly the film’s sympathetic characters are white.
At the very least, Costner utilizes a diverse cast commensurate to the presence of Black people and the presence of Chinese immigrants in the context of the West, accompanied by a brilliantly shot wide angle by DP J. Michael Muro.
“Horizon” is suggested as some kind of conspiracy theory with a mysterious publisher printing pamphlets promising a land of milk and honey on a death occupied terrain. However, I can’t refrain from viewing the movie through the prism of “How The West Was Pioneered”. That Western in the end, was never the same with the context of the period that it was made or the stereotypical elements of forced, weak love stories. “Horizon” is being released in a more ‘enlightened’ period, especially with Martin Scorsese’s “Killer of the Flower Moon” and other Native American films like “Reservation Dogs,” “Wild Indian,” “The Body Remembers When the World Broken Open,” “Beans,” etc. This context intensified the pressure on Costner even more. And so far, he has not fully escaped the role of ‘Dances with Wolves” auteur. Yes, that helmer, for better or worse, is still here in every nook of this grand film.
Even though the potential “Horizon” franchise’s first installment effectively prepares the audience for sequel’s but pushes the character built in “Yellowstone” pre-actor’s departure, it’s hard to endure this single feature. It almost never delivers what the audience craves for a view of Costner on the wide open plains.
Besides Costner, it gives us few endearing characters. Actually, without my notes, I can’t recall a single name. It appears to be an oversight to rely on potential sequels to do the theme justice. Horizon” goes in the complete opposite direction and leaves its audience yearning for much of the good stuff.
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