BULLET TIME
OLD HENRY I Tim Blake Nelson saddles up for an old-school western.
Old Henry is the sort of gloriously hyper-masculine film where you can smell the gunpowder and leather. For director Potsy Ponciroli, it was an opportunity to make the sort of western he had grown up loving, and judging by the acclaim it received following its Venice Film Festival premiere, he was not the only one feeling warm nostalgia for the genre. “Venice was a blast!” Ponciroli tells Teasers. “The premiere night was incredible, walking the red carpet and seeing how the crowd reacted to an old-school western was great. We left just glowing.”
Ponciroli’s film stars Tim Blake Nelson as the eponymous Henry, living in isolation on a farm with his son Wyatt (Gavin Lewis) and trying to avoid any trouble. Their lives are thrown into disarray when an injured man with a bag full of cash arrives pursued by a posse led by Ketchum (Stephen Dorff). Films like these live or die on how compelling their villain is, and Dorff relishes every menacing glance and sneer. “Stephen Dorff was born to be a bad guy!” grins Ponciroli, “His face, that cigarette voice, he was so perfect.”
Having grown up watching westerns, Ponciroli thought he knew his stuff, but his expertise paled in comparison to star Tim Blake Nelson: “I didn’t realise how
little a western fan I was until I met Tim! Before he signed his contract, we talked every day for a month, going through the script, old movies and books. One of the first calls he was like, ‘Have you seen McCabe & Mrs. Miller?’ which I hadn’t. He goes, ‘I’m going to hang up now, call me when you’ve seen it.’ I had to go do my research before he would answer my call again.”
Old Henry also speaks to wider mythology, in ways that aren’t revealed until a thrilling third-act twist. But there are definite modern influences, both in the tenderness of the father-son relationship and the ingloriousness of violence. The action sequences are outstanding, but more visceral than many of the film’s forebears. “Guns are loud and they’re heavy and they’re scary. There is weight to the decision to pull the trigger. That was at the heart of all the gunplay, every bullet was accounted for. If you loaded six in there you had six shots and then had to take time to hide, wait and reload,” explains Ponciroli. “I wanted people to feel how scary that is.”
The resulting film is an affecting love letter to the genre Ponciroli doesn’t see himself staying in. “Whatever’s next, it won’t be another western. I just passed on one that I loved, but it’s hard to jump into Hollywood without being pigeonholed. I will definitely come back to westerns eventually, though, I had a really good time doing it.”
ETA | 8 NOVEMBER / OLD HENRY COMES OUT ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS NEXT MONTH.