The best of the more recent Western.
Since Unforgiven, the entire Western genre has become more contemplative and challenging of its past. Here are the best ones Justine Smith
The Western has always been a genre that relies more on myth than history. Centuries after the frontier was colonized (and decades after its heyday on movie screens), the Western is undergoing a cinematic renaissance with films like The Rider, Bone Tomahawk and the upcoming The Sisters Brothers.
Part of a larger legacy of Westerns since Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), the new Western reflects on the genre’s troubled history. The dreams of the past are cut up and pasted together in new ways, and as the scope of new filmmakers has opened up, stories that challenge the mythologized past, that seek to right past wrongs have emerged.
While our idea of the West has never been more expansive, it has also never seemed so claustrophobic. The West is no longer the land of open space and freedom, but rather a landscape of oppression and injustice.
In appreciation of the genre’s new and eclectic direction, let’s take a look at the best Westerns since Unforgiven. 20 3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Like almost all Elmore Leonard adaptations, James Mangold’s sepia-toned action western remake contrasts the difference between what it means to live and what it means to survive, all while exploring morality shifting in the face of unfair and exploitative labour practices.
19
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Despite its plastic, wide-eyed Dreamworks animation, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (a movie told from the perspective of a wild mustang) might be the biggest film ever made with an anti-colonial message geared toward kids. 18
Django Unchained (2012) Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained is an epic revenge narrative that questions precisely who gets to be a hero in American cinema with predictable flourishes and digressions. 17
Reel Injun (2009) A documentary about the cinematic history of oppressive and offensive portrayals of First Nations people, Reel Injun mostly focuses on the Western genre. In doing so, it presents an impassioned view on the consequences of representation on indigenous communities.
16
Tombstone (1993)
Embodying the larger-than-life myth of the old-school Western, Tombstone is crude and magnificent. With cutting dialogue and reprehensible characters, the film is held together by incredible performances from Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell, who embody Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday with ferocious gravitas. 15
The Hateful Eight (2015) Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight is a blue-toned, deceitful chamber piece with echoes of Agatha Christie. Set in a small Wyoming pitstop, a bounty hunter and his prisoner find refuge from a brutal winter storm, only to find themselves embroiled among unsavoury and untrustworthy characters played by some of the best actors working today.
14
The Revenant (2015)
Leo DiCaprio fights a bear, eats a raw bison liver, wins an Oscar and is declared an acting legend for life after enduring the infamously ruthless shoot of The Revenant. A frontier movie shot in twilight and cast in beautiful mellow blues, the film’s aesthetic poetry only slightly lessens Hugh Glass’s dirty and undignified survival quest after being left for dead. 13
Wind River (2017) Set in the crisp, clear winter light of Wyoming, Wind River is about a hunter who discovers the body of a barefoot young First Nations woman dead in the snow. Wind River is a harrowing interpretation of grief and redemption and a desolate look at the systematic injustice that pilfers and forgets First Nations communities. 12 Sweet Country (2017) A quiet western set on the Australian frontier where an aboriginal farmhand shoots a white man in self-defence and goes on the run, Sweet Country is a poetic epic of injustice set in 1929. 11 True Grit (2010) Violence goes hand in hand with Old Testament justice in the Coen brothers’ adaptation of the popular Charles Portis novel about a young girl searching for her father’s killer. A movie of unique pastoral beauty and cutting period dialogue, True Grit ranks among the Coens’ most underrated and rewatchable films. 10
The Good, The Bad and the Weird (2008) A South Korean Western about three criminal outlaws in search of treasure, The Good, The Bad and the Weird pays homage to Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy. Relentless, this ridiculously entertaining film embraces clever dialogue and comic energy as director Kim Jee-woon bends the Western to fit his epic kinetic style. 9
Meek’s Cutoff (2010) With a claustrophobic aspect ratio, the expanses of the open West become inhospitable as a group of frontiers people find themselves stranded in the open desert. Nothing much happens, but director Kelly Reichardt’s subversive style focuses on the ordinariness of survival rather than on grand dramatic incidents. 8
The Proposition (2005) Flies literally stick to filth and blood in The Proposition, a grimey Australian period Western. Directed by John Wilcock and written by musician Nick Cave, The Proposition is about an outlaw who has to kill his psychotic older brother, guilty of rape and murder, in order to save his younger one.
7
The Searchers (2016)
Inuk filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk reimagines John Ford’s The Searchers in this story of a vengeful husband in pursuit of the men who destroyed his home and kidnapped his wife. One of Canada’s greatest filmmakers, Kunuk belies the mythology of the Western genre in his exploration of community and the fragile bonds that define heroism. 6
Hell or High Water (2016)
In an effort to save the family ranch, two brothers try to pull off the perfect crime, facing off against an old-world lawman. With pathos and raw comic energy, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan reinterprets the idea of the outlaw as a cult hero in the era of credit card debt and subprime mortgages. The Rider (2018) The simple story of a man who falls off a horse and has to get back on, The Rider blurs the lines between fact and fiction as director Chloé Zhao uses non-actors in a modern Western where cell phones exist alongside open plains. A meditative reflection by a cowboy who grapples with his masculinity in the face of personal upheaval and change, The Rider is one of the year’s best films.
4
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
In a landscape that could not be further from God’s light, Bone Tomahawk is about a quest to save the town doctor from cannibals. A nauseating and patient genre-flick that outruns similarly violent revisionist Westerns due to its horrifying dismantling of manifest destiny, Bone Tomahawk has a grungy digital look that emphasizes every horrifying texture from its dirty and bloody milieu. 3
Dead Man (1995) Jim Jarmusch’s dreamy black and white western about an on the run accountant reimagines the American cinematic Western as an abstract landscape of nightmares, colonizers and crooks. A movie that embraces the transformative powers of the frontier, Dead Man also features a wonderful score composed by Neil Young, which only lends to the film’s phantasmagorical psychedelic vibes. 2
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) A poetic meditation on myth and memory with echoes of Michael Ondaatje’s verse novella, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, The Assassination of Jesse James is a reflection on the last days of Jesse James and the mythic legacy of his story. With a crystalline soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, the film explores the tragedy of the West through the parallel narratives of Jesse James’s death and Robert Ford’s life. 1
No Country for Old Men (2007) The Coens adapt Cormac McCarthy in this tale of a hunter who stumbles upon $2 million and begins his race against fate, embodied by the terrifying Anton Chigurh. A film about false histories and artificial memories, the American frontier is remembered as a land of hope, presented as a false premise that is ripped away by an unforgivingly violent present until all that remains is a vague dream of man, mountains and fire.