Movies You Need To See: Horizon: An American Saga – Part 1

Kevin Costner sure seems happy to be the modern standard bearer of a dying genre.  Why else would he spend $35 million of his own money, turn his back on the highest rated show on TV, and stake his entire reputation on an earnest, complicated, multi-part Western epic that harkens back to the grand days of the American Cinema? From his early work in “Silverado”, his Oscar-winning “Dances With Wolves”, to his masterpiece and TNT Sunday Afternoon staple “Open Range”, the man is as permanently fixated on the American West as he is about Baseball, the dueling predominant myth structures of the recently deceased twentieth-century. Costner seems to believe that no other medium holds as scathing a funhouse mirror to our world, exaggerating our faults and virtues in equal measure while offering a sandbox for storytelling that no other genre allows. If he is the great chronicler of the modern Western, then “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” is his ‘War and Peace’; a massive, unwieldy, endlessly beautiful movie that showcases a filmmaker with plenty left to wrestle with about our literal present through the lens of the mythical past. 

From its opening frames, “Horizon” provides a thesis for its own existence. A lone surveyor in the middle of the desert makes elegant, methodical notes as he marks off the site for an incoming settlement. He drives a stake into the ground before a towering vista of mountains that would make John Ford weep, before leaving the frame as the title card fades up. A surveyor’s stake, American-made, driven into the virgin soil of an occupied land; laying dominion over a future fraught with wild eyed hope and vicious conflict. The first words spoken in the film are by a pair of Apache boys observing from the overlooking mountain, puzzled by the actions of these white men, who they believe are playing a game. Meanwhile, these boys’ kinsmen watch silently behind, troubled by this infestation of “civilization” swarming their land. While these surveyors are soon killed by the Apache, in the hopes their deaths would dissuade any more unwanted visitors, the wagons keep on coming and so begins this sprawling story about the irrefutable, unyielding, and downright stupid persistence of people to pursue a better future for themselves and their children at all costs. 

This film is not so much episodic as it is novelistic in a fashion I don’t believe I have ever seen before; with a style and structure inherently cinematic in a world where the multi-part prestige TV show is king. As a Chapter 1, this film runs three hours and one minute, using every single second to its advantage. Spanning dozens of characters and at least five individual plot threads that rarely, if ever, converge, Costner uses every shade in his palette to realize his grand Western canvas; transitioning from character to character with the assuredness of an author and the visual deftness of a savant. Audiences will surely prefer some stories over others, but their placement does not reek of vanity. Any one of them could power a fantastic film on their own, but together they combine to form an ever-evolving mosaic that would still feel small projected on the Las Vegas Sphere. It’s trite to say, but they don’t make them like this anymore. I’m not sure they ever did. 

Costner does not shy away from the savagery of the world these people occupy but makes an unusual amount of space for their humanity. His camera and script, co-written with Jon Baird and Mark Kasdan, do not belabor points of morality but instead casts their lens upon the actions of desperate people in the hope that audiences can discern the difference between the just and the cruel. An early sequence depicting an Apache Raid on the fledgling Horizon settlement is haunting and visceral, with warriors attacking the tents with horrifying veracity and settlers defending themselves knowing their survival is a moot point. But while a film from an earlier era might actively depict the raiding Apache as ghoulish monsters from a children’s story, Costner instead shows them as they are; men whose children will go hungry and whose way of life will be decimated if more of these lamb-eyed settlers continue to fill up this valley. There is no joy in their slaughter. These are men with families who are, in their minds, protecting their futures. When the U.S. Army moves in to rescue the survivors, the horror of the aftermath is laid bare for all. No amount of bloodshed will stop the tidal wave of settlers from seeking a better life in the frontier and now because of the Apache attempts to staunch that flow, many angry or money hungry men will go hunting for their kin, men too ignorant to tell the difference between one Native person or another and too despicable to care.

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This dichotomy, of men and women working and killing and praying to stem the tide of history, is a fruitless one. They may as well be tilting at windmills. Yet they persist all the same. The Apache. The Settlers. Everyone. They all want a better life free from pain and violence. It is a shame, however, that throughout human history, pain and violence are the most cited mythical remedies for achieving that better life. Costner frames this inherent human tragedy without malice. He is on the side of those yearning to break free and those flailing against the incoming tide of “American Progress”. This story is a melancholy one; teeming with pride, hope, and sacrifice in the face of both human and natural cruelty. Costner aspires to represent them all, give them voice and purpose amongst the vast wilderness of his film, and does, to this writer’s viewing, an admirable job worthy of his talents and the rich traditions from which he draws. 

This is a film I could talk about for hours and will assuredly see again in theaters. I cried early and often throughout its three hour run time. The American Western is not history, it is myth, but myths have a way of telling us more about ourselves than we might realize. Costner has put his money where his talent is to make that abundantly clear. I believe he has done so, in thunderous fashion, and you should take the chance to witness it for yourself while you can.

You’ll be glad you did.

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Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 is now showing at Prytania Theatres Canal Place

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