travised87

A great many people of our current iPod generation have missed out on some of the most brilliant, daring and artistic endeavours in film during the sixties and seventies. That was a period when film still held onto its artistic impulse, when the modern day blockbuster, complete with stunning visual effects, mind-bogglingly fast action sequences, and miraculously thin story lines and characterisations was still in its infancy. Over time, as some nostalgic folk of the 'then' would say, 'the world has become too fast, and kids today don't give a damn about deeper stuff'. Indeed it has; through the development of film over the decades, we see - at least a glimpse of - this seemingly reductive summarisation of the vast social and cultural changes in the world. The legendary final scene of this film, where the three principal characters face, is roughly about five minutes long, from the time they implicitly agree to this 'solution' to the first 'bang' of Eastwood's pistol. In these five minutes, Leone uses music and recurring shots of the men to create the tension, engineering a sense of finality and fatality in the situation that could quite possibly take all their lives. At that critical moment, greater importance is given to this all-encompassing tension, where the entire film's plot and the journey must culminate in a decisive end, than to the eventual outcome, which would be revealed in all eventuality. As audience, Leone wants us to participate in this tension, to completely transport ourselves into the simmering, immoral West, and feel the presence of death as the characters do, and therefore to achieve a cinematic orgasm that involves both the intellectual and visceral, in turn immortalising it. This painstaking attention to detail, the need to go beyond the bare plot and action, and the urge to create a cinematic environment that transcends, is something that we see too little of today. Indeed, we are privy to this intellectual desire from the very start.

The first shot in the film, of the brusque, brutally masculine face of a minor character (who returns later) that somehow eerily seems directly born out of the harshness of the desert is wonderful example of heightened realism that epitomised films of that time. We can almost smell and feel the sweat on the man's face; we can delve into his eyes, into his soul, and through it, witness the moral degradation that Leone wants us to observe. This film could easily have been given a title, with something to the effect of earning some 'dollars', as are the other two in the trilogy, but Leone decides to punctuate it with an exposition on morality with the title he gives it. As any discerning viewer would infer, it is dichotomous to the nature of the pertinent characters. All three are 'ugly', and Leone tries of remind us with his concluding piece that morality is a vague, invariably overlapping concept that is too often oversimplified. Using the west as a setting, we realise that people are too complex, too evil to start with, and any attempt to glorify one is to shun this gruesome reality. This perfectly explains the unique collection of faces in the film, with are all polished with the desert's sweat that makes them impenetrable to scrutiny of any kind.

The three adjectives that form the title function almost completely on one side of the moral boundary. And yet, no one can call the film entirely immoral or fatalistic, for we witness traces of humanity in the most absurd of circumstances. Blondie offering a cigar to a dying soldier and providing him warmth is once example of this. Understanding this moral equation, we can then justify the labels given to the three protagonists. Unlike the other two, Blondie keeps his sadistic impulses to a minimum. Also, he tellingly suggests the method of resolution to decide the recipient of the money which leads to the final confrontation scene. Most notably though, he underlines his seeming sense of fairness by taking his rightful share of the money, albeit making it impossible for Tuco to collect his. Unlike him, Angel Eyes shows no pretence of such selflessness, and is perfectly willing to brutalise Tuco (another chilling scene) to get the secret out of him. However, even he believes in simply completing his job, and would not resort to perfidy that Tuco is culpable of, making him the 'ugly' version of humanity. As we see, all three differ from one another only in degree, unlike the ironic suggestion of the title.

Overall, this is a complete auteur's film, where Leone underscores memorable action sequences with great atmospheric detail and an underlying message that is so finely sewed beneath the more palpable layers that most of us tend to overlook it completely. This may not be the pinnacle of artistic cinema of 'that' time, but it reflects the sophistication a film can manifest beneath the superficial layers. Its slowly unraveling scenes and attention to detail is reminder to all of us to stop, and sometimes look at life with a keener eye, instead of being constantly pre-occupied with our daily, routine existence.

When you have undergone a journey, you feel, that a change has occurred, that there is some growth, some learning and development within you that was absent at the start. Many films you watch, start at point A, and after the end, bring you back to point A. This film however, carries you along with it, so you feel part of the events that have unfolded before your eyes. At the beginning, you are thrust into the suffering of the village folk, their pain and desperation. As the film progresses, you get to know them, that they are more multi-faceted than first perceived. At the end, however, it is the samurai than you connect with, and like them, the euphoric singing of the farmers seems alien and distant to you. So you start the journey with the farmers, and finish it off with the samurai. Yes there is a melancholic feel that is not freed from the film; what's more is that it is what we can connect to better than any joy displayed in bouts. Such is the mood of the film that the ambivalence of life is inextricably linked to it.

There is little else anyone can say about this film, beyond what has been said already. The pace of the film, which I was slightly wary of before watching it, was perfect I thought. The depth and detail of the plot required a painstaking build-up, if only for verisimilitude's sake. The interactions between the farmers and the samurai, two different strata of society, reveal the blatant similarities they share, concealed beneath the veil of social standing. Toshiro Mifune's character is the bridge between the two, and tellingly sacrifices his life, for the love of his ancestry, and to prove himself a true samurai. His acting is wonderful, along with Takashi Shimura's and the rest of the principal cast. Shimura who looked pathetic, decrepit in Ikiru, is a strong, canny leader here, particularly to Katsushiro. The film itself of course, can also be seen as the coming-of-age story of Kutsushiro, from a novice samurai 'child' to a war hero and lover. There is little the samurai could take away from the battle, but his growth could be one.

For us though, there is a milestone in film-making to take away, something that will remain with us for a very long time. We experience an EPIC, in every sense of the word, and watch every other film, in comparison to this masterpiece!

The subject matter about aliens watching over us and the monolith being the threshold leading to each progressive stage of human evolution is something i am rather skeptical about. In fact, the entire theory did not occur to me as i was watching the film. What did was the intensely surreal and psychedelic nature of the story that transpired before me. Perhaps it was the novelty of it, the sheer audacity to make such a film, composed almost entirely of slow-moving camera footage of space and the vagaries of our universe, which no real story or conventional plot, and with cinematography that still gives me goosebumps. It seemed almost like a nightmare at times, with the space which unlike everything else, has no beginning or end. Its we humans, our imaginations, our need to theorise, to elucidate our external reality that confines us to mortality. Yes I do admit that at one point, i started to fall asleep, but once HAL was introduced, my interest in the film rekindled. Its certainly not something i am regularly exposed to and i enjoyed the novelty of this, though i cant say that i have understood the film's content well enough.

Of what i have fathomed, the film does present some intriguing questions: how has man evolved? Whats our next stage of evolution? Do machines have emotions? And if they do, does that mean they are capable of human sensations such as jealousy, apprehension and viciousness? Will they eventually rule us one day? The creation of HAL was wonderfully done. What is really ironic is that he, or it, shows more human emotions than any of the humans it interacts with on the space shuttle, suggesting that the dawn of a new era is perhaps not far away.

Whatever the issue, enjoy this film for the taste it leaves behind after you watch it, of something surreal and inexplicable. Forgot to mention the usage of classical music, which adds to the lurid quality of the whole experience. Try it!