Saturday, November 27, 2004
This move is done, a little more or a little less. Now I try to brush off the exhaustion and remember where I left off with the rest of the world.
Last night, we saw a truly, truly spectacular film, a western called Renegade (though the original and far more appropriate title is Blueberry) from director Jan Kounen. I wish I were clear enough of mind right now to do something more than heap expletives upon this movie. Yes, it was beautiful and powerful and breathtaking and bizarre and dazzling and well cast and better written and visually stunning and certainly one of the best films I've seen in the last few years. But that doesn't really tell you anything at all. Though Renegade covers a lot of supernatural territory, I won't call it horror, because it isn't. And it isn't exactly a ghost story, either. It's a Campbellian hero quest, an exploration of American Indian mythology and religion, a poetic investigation of the flexibility of time that stops just short of science fiction, and an anti-western that gives Sergio Leone a run for his money. At the risk of missing the mark entirely and doing Kounen and Co. a disservice, imagine what Murder of Angels or Low Red Moon would have been like if they'd been westerns and maybe you can begin to imagine this exquisitely uncanny film. If you think anything at all of my opinion of art, you should see this movie as soon as you can find the DVD (which shouldn't be too hard). And if you're the sort of person who hates it when someone gushes like this and tries to persuade you to see a movie (or read a book or whatever), if your natural inclination at this point is skepticism and/or annoyed disgust, please ignore everything I just said and see this movie just because you can probably spare a couple of hours.
Meanwhile, I feel like shit and think maybe I'll go to bed...
10:02 PM
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