Once more, with sadness

I saw 3:10 to Yuma on Sunday, and liked it quite a bit. I knew the background - it's remake of a 1957 Delmer Daves film with Glenn Ford and Van Heflin - and both are based on an Elmore Leonard short story. I also know the genre - I grew up in Montana, and where there was a television, odds were good that a Western was playing. At first, I wasn't partial to that world: at playtime, I was by default The Indian and was usually required to die some ridiculous death at the hand of - well everyone else. It was tiresome and simplistic, and for many years I wrote the genre off. After I moved from Montana, however, nostaglia took over and I began to reassess this uniquely American art form. I'll admit, movies like Tombstone, Last of the Mohicans, and even Legends of the Fall helped drum up the romance a bit. Sweeping vistas, tragic heroes, and iconic capability all made me, by proxy, proud of my "cowboy and indian" roots. In turn, I revisited the classics - High Noon, Shane, The Searchers - and found in them the morality I grew to admire about my home and upbringing. Take responsibility for yourself. Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Sure, it sounds silly and facile here, as I "blog" about it, but when Gary Cooper is facing his death with nary a whimper, respect has to be paid. It's impossible to deny the appeal of that kind of conviction. And that's what I always took away from the best of the westerns. The stoic conviction with which the hero either kills or marches toward death. He takes the hard road. He doesn't cry about it.

And that's what was so surprising about this latest Yuma. After the film had ended, and I had some time to digest it, I couldn't shake this feeling that the overall tone of the film was not violence and machismo, as the posters and trailers would have you believe, but sadness. It's what propels the film, and elevates it above the cartoonish violence of most everything else out there with a similar body count. All the best westerns are sad at the core, and I was pleasantly surprised to see respect paid to the genre without being cliched or derivative.

It's not a "clean" film. The ending will anger many, I'm sure. The morality is wrapped up in pride and vengeance, and there is no reward for good behaviour here. Yet despite this - because of this - I loved this movie. As a film, it was one of the most satisfying dramas I've seen this year. As a western - well, as a western I am a bit hobbled. I can only judge westerns on that original, skewed scale of mine: Do they make me proud to be a Montanan? This one does, and as I sit here typing on my laptop I can't help but think that trading this computer and apartment for a horse and some scrub-land to homestead may be just what I need to get back on track. I've always thought that. Only let that homestead have broadband.