I watched 3:10 to Yuma last week. Excellent. I didn’t know much about it, and I’m starting to think I prefer reading and watching things knowing very little of the story, which isn’t conducive to blogging about them. Anyway, I didn’t know going in (and was told early on) that the story dealt with what they later called the myth of the noble outlaw.
In a DVD documentary, the historians interviewed on film said the American Wild West was not as simple as some have explained it and that the myths far outweighed reality, but there were outlaws who robbed stagecoaches, banks, and railroads for reasons beyond criminal gain. And several famous men were rather civil about it.
For example, Black Bart robbed 28 stagecoaches at night, on foot, without a gun. He didn’t rob passengers, apparently, only the stagecoach company itself, and according to a man on the DVD, he carried a stick carved to look like a gun. At night, no one could tell it wasn’t a firearm and they could not follow him through the canyon in the dead of night because he knew the terrain far better than they did.
The movie didn’t have anything to do with Bart, but it was still good. What do you think of westerns in general? Actor Ben Foster, who played the right hand man to Russell Crowe’s character, said he thought the men in westerns were larger than life, like the men and gods in Greek myths. He said the Greeks had their myths about gods and godlike men, and Americans have their westerns with men who never give up their principles, shoot pistols out of other men’s hands, or draw and fire faster than sight. Do you think that’s a fair comparison?
Although I would generally agree with Ben Foster’s comparison between westerns and ancient epics, I thought 3:10 to Yuma succeeded by taking an opposite tack. The hero isn’t a god-like sharpshooter, but a crippled failure who stands up to impossible odds. His bravery is breath-taking.
Yes, it was. I think they acknowledge that somewhere, but I don’t remember. Foster was speaking generally I’m pretty sure. That Winchester movie Jimmy Stewart was in would be a good fit for greek myth parallels. Isn’t it about a prized rifle being stolen and the hero tracking it down to recover it? Just like a named magical weapon. Yuma had a weapon like that too. “The Hand of God” was Ben Wade’s pistol.
I had the opposite experience (except I still liked the movie): the whole time I was watching the screen, I was as interested in the dialog it made with Westerns of the past as I was in the (admittedly marvelous) character story unfolding before my eyes.
Like most people of my levels of pretentiousness, I watched (and took seriously) a number of revisionist Westerns such as The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
In those films, the legendary qualities of the Western were used against themselves: instead of virtuous men who were heroes because they could shoot a gun out of someone’s hand, you have amoral men who are heroes…for the same reason.
In a way, 3:10 to Yuma starts out the same way, with Russell Crowe as the amoral but artistically sensitive villain who is a hero simply because he’s captivating and glamorous. But the brilliance of the movie is the way in which the viewer comes to realize that Crowe’s glamor is hollow and meaningless, whereas Wade’s humility and simple courage is truly, sustainably, substantially beautiful.
In the 70’s, moviegoers came into a movie expecting to sympathize with the hero, and applauded the “courage” of directors willing to deconstruct traditional heroism. Movies like Yuma give me hope that America, in its collective unconscious, is beginning to rediscover the more eternal value of genuine goodness.
I think that Ben Wade is mythological for several reasons: that bullets rarely if ever seem to hit him, that he is never outdrawn, the fact that people are mesmerized by him even knowing the evil that he’s done, and his constant escapes from the law and from imprisonment, just to name a few.
I loved the movie as well, though I’m not really sure if I want to delve too deep into what it says or is trying to say when the one truly good character dies at the end. It’s kind of bleak and sad if you think about it, although in his dying Dan found what he couldn’t find in life.
Personally, I’d love to see a sequel around Ben Wade if done well and for the right reasons. His story isn’t finished, and it’s one I’d pay to see continued.