Next great Western
‘Godless’ mines our history to produce a classic of the genre
The Western’s era of dominance in popular entertainment ended years ago — you might even posit that it was yet another staple of American culture that fell victim to the revisionism of the 1960s. But because it is the most American of genres, the Western has never completely died. There are other reasons for that, and they are on full and captivating display in the new seven-episode limited Scott on “Godless” Wednesday, series Frank “Godless,” and is neither Nov. available 22. created gussied on Netflix by up with “Deadwood,” Shakespearean or set up language, as a futuristic a la amusement park installation, a la “Westworld.” The series is an unabashedly classic Western, not only mining the same thematic veins as great films of the genre such as “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,” “Shane,”
“The Searchers” and “My Darling Clementine,” but weaving reverential acknowledgments of those and other great Westerns into its own complex, beautifully told stories.
“Godless” is steeped in mythos, both historical and biblical. It is the story of a young man named Roy Goode ( Jack O’Connell), abandoned by his older brother when he was just a kid and taught the ways of survival in the “godless” West of the 1880s by an outlaw named Frank Griffin ( Jeff Daniels), sporting the beard and bearing of a biblical prophet.
“This here is the paradise of the locust, the lizard, the snake,” he says. “It’s the land of the blade and the rifle. It’s godless country.”
Goode has a soul and a moral core, which prompts him to “betray” Griffin and make off with thousands of dollars of loot. With Griffin and his band of 30 outlaws in hot pursuit, Goode winds up at a New Mexico Territory ranch owned by widowed Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery), who lives with her son, Truckee (Samuel Marty), and an elderly and serenely wise Native American woman (Tantoo Cardinal).
The series’ various stories unfold individually, with occasional flashbacks gently inserted to explain, for example, how Frank first met Roy as a boy, why the adult Roy struggles to talk when we first meet him, and how he is motivated to head West, to California and the edge of the emerging nation, to reconnect with his older brother.
Alice lives on the outskirts of a town mostly populated with women. Two years earlier, almost all of the men in the tiny, dusty town of La Belle died in a mining accident. Now the women are in charge of everything. The schoolteacher is a former prostitute who worked out of the La Belle Hotel. She and the other women, both widows and prostitutes, keep the town running. There’s a sheriff named Bill McNue (Scoot McNairy). His sister Mary Agnes (Merritt Wever) is a widow who has traded gingham dresses for trousers and boots. McNue’s deputy, Whitey Winn (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), is still a kid, proud of his pistol-twirling skills, but he has the heart of a hero.
The central plot line is about Griffin’s obsessed search for Roy, but even he seems to know that the real object of the search is his own destiny. Griffin often says he knows his own demise “because I already lived it,” and he has no choice but to pursue it.
In terms of American history, Griffin’s pursuit of Roy, Roy’s determination to go west in search of his brother, and the conflict between good and bad in the settling of an unsettled territory are rooted in the concept of manifest destiny. A significant part of 19th century American history turns on the widely held belief that it was a mandate of the United States to push westward, claiming, settling and “civilizing” everything between the coasts.
Even the most shallow Westerns reflect that concept, but the true classics (so many directed by John Ford) understood the complex results of what civilization meant. So did the literary critic Leslie Fiedler. If we look at American literature in the 19th century, we see men heading westward, on their own, or perhaps with another male companion (Chingachgook in Cooper’s “The Leatherstocking Tales,” Huck Finn’s raft-mate Jim, who joins him in an effort to escape civilization). Women represent order and civilization in literature and in Western films. Men are willing to fight whatever obstacles lay in the way of civilization, but once the land has been “tamed,” they’re often ready to move on, choosing independence and solitude over love and settling down.
“Godless” both celebrates and defies this premise, which Fiedler detailed in “Love and Death in the American Novel.” Like Shane, Goode’s journey westward is a solo one. At the same time, women are the civilizing element in La Belle, but because the town is godless, without civilizing creeds, they have to take on the men’s jobs to defend it against Griffin and his army of outlaws.
The series often moves at a deliberate pace, but you’ll never be bored or impatient watching it — not only because there are plenty of effective and sometimes gruesome action scenes, but also because Frank takes delicious care in writing multidimensional, irresistibly engaging characters. Evil as Griffin is, he has a soul and in his way believes the biblical pronouncements he often utters. Griffin is an easy person to hate at first, but later on, displays humanizing elements, augmented by Daniels’ Emmybaiting performance.
O’Connell and McNairy are equally captivating — one is destined to search in solitude, the other is already more grounded and ready to settle down. Each character embodies telling symbolism. Goode has trouble speaking and doesn’t know how to read until Alice takes it upon herself to teach him, the female exercising civilizing influence on the young man.
McNue is losing his sight. Eventually he will go blind, closing him off from the wild untamed world around him. A widower, he blames his young daughter for his wife’s death and feels guilty about that, but at the same time, doesn’t know how to overcome his resentment.
Brodie-Sangster carries a lot of weight for a supporting player. Whitey Winn is an adolescent with an unexamined belief in the mythology of the Old West. He has to grow up quickly when a community of former slaves is targeted by Griffin’s gang. He, too, will be “civilized” by a female, taught to play the violin by Louise Hobbs ( Jessica Sula), daughter of the former slave family.
Emmy winner (for “Nurse Jackie”) Wever makes Mary Agnes the most interesting female character in the cast, even above Dockery’s Alice Fletcher. Mary Agnes is a woman of few words, but when she speaks, it is with a directness that implicitly challenges anyone within earshot to disagree with her.
The sun will never fully set on the Western, because it is the story of us, and, as great Westerns like “Godless” prove, a story that is far more complicated — and far more relevant to our own time — than white hats versus black hats.