hervieu-philippe2

Some laughed at it in 1976 (Pauline Kael, i suppose...), but the History has closed the matter : simply one of the best westerns ever made. Orson Welles was right : "I realized that it belongs with the great Westerns. You know, the great Westerns of Ford and Hawks and people like that." I would add that Eastwood is definitely the greatest US living director with Woody Allen.

Don't ask me why I love that movie, but, God !, I love it ! Maybe because it's about a border (physical : between two countries, that's means nowhere for the common sense; and mental : living or keeping dreaming ?). Maybe because Alain Tanner knows that trees and cows (I love cows) have something to tell us. Maybe because he knows that ordinary is extraordinary. And certainly because of the Terry Riley music. The great french critic Serge Daney wrote about that movie those definitive lines : "This is the enjoyment at the idea that "Things are there", and demand, in silence, to be seen, to be registered, filmed; and this is the anguish at the idea there is no more collective way that lead to them (a collective way is "the fiction"), only individual itinerary, some secret ways".

A deeply sensitive introspection around the themes of presence and absence, memories, life, love, death and permanence. Not a movie to see, but sensations to live. Something about what can't be said or show. If you don't like it, your are only half living. If you like it, you are already half dead. A unique magical object. Sad and beautiful. Pure poetry.