Thu, 31 May 2007

The Terrorist Josey Wales

Why do I like this movie so much? Because it's Eastwood at the height of his squinting prowess? Because it's an unpretentious, yet still a sweeping epic noir that set a whole new standard for the genre? Because it's a tour de force of anti-hero reality drama? Yes, it's a great film in so many different ways. But why does it make my short list?

Outlaw Josey Wales wasn't even nominated for best picture in 1976. It was up against masterpieces like Network, Taxi Driver, All the President's Men, and the big winner, Rocky (yes, Rocky "one"). Back then, having an embarrassment of nominee riches was commonplace. The 70s was an era of great films, so the bar was set higher than it is now. Still, despite it's not insignificant charms, even today Outlaw Josey Wales wouldn't rate as one of the greatest film in the way that sort of thing is objectively measured.

But using my own artistic sensibilities as the measuring stick, it will always be a greatest film in my scale and easily makes my top eight. Of course, my artistic sensibilities were formed by this film, so the judgment is self fulfilling. In my mind, all subsequent anti-heroes (or posi-heroes) have been judged somewhat wanting against the unsurpassable ideal of Eastwood as Josey Wales. Apparently, I'm not alone in this. The Wiki entry for Anti Hero has a photo of Eastwood, albeit from his role as the man with no name, a satisfying yet lesser anti-hero role I would rate thus because of its ambiguity. Wales is unambiguous if he's anything.

My passionate encounter with the film Serpico, released three years earlier, set me up to crave an anti hero like Wales; Outlaw Josey Wales filled the void that detective Frank Serpico had gouged out of me. No doubt these are both admirable yet tragic characters driven by ultimately lost causes. I'm a sucker for a lost cause, and Outlaw Josey Wales depicted a scenario, the last great guerrilla fighter in the West after the Civil War, that was just as much a lost cause as the one last honest NYPD cop depicted by Serpico. The difference between the two is that, unlike Serpico, who started out as a naive pawn at the mercy of events, Wales had a pair of Navy revolvers filled with clues right from the get go. There's a lost cause where you get swallowed up by the beast, and a lost cause where you give the beast considerable indigestion.

Maybe you could say that had Wales been transported to 1970 and made to serve in the NYPD, he would never just naively blabbed to expose corruption, and consequently get spit on, set up, and have his face nearly blown off. No he would never be the bumbling Serpico. He would be Dirty Harry, finding some verbally quiet yet ballistically noisy way to set things aright with his 44 Magnum. At the very least, he would do the spitting. "Good fer just about anything, eh? How's it work on stains?"

Outlaw Josey Wales introduced me to hopeless idealism with a loaded gun. Hopeless idealism that shoots first, after carefully aiming. Hopeless idealism bound to the feud, defined and constrained by the feud, weakened by the feud, given vulnerability by the feud, yet, paradoxically, made invincible and immortal by the feud.

In literature, there are many stories of revenge. Vendetta. Monomania. The Count of Monte Cristo, The Cask of Amontillado, The Iliad, Hamlet, Moby Dick. And it's a popular theme in cinema too. Many of the cinema classics found on other lists are revenge stories. But you'll notice that the great films Godfather I/II doesn't make my list, and that's because Wales already defined a cinematic depiction of a man living only for revenge in a way that nothing subsequent could improve on. The vengeful calculations of Michael Corleone in Godfather, of Andy Dufresne in Shawshank, and even William Munny in Unforgiven do not reach the level of Wales because Wales embodies the unresolved and unresolvable feud with the paradox of total nonchalance.

Wales doesn't work at revenge, he doesn't obsess, he doesn't try to get even.

Jamie: You can't get 'em all, Josie.
Josey Wales: That's a fact.
Jamie: How come you're doing this, then?
Josey Wales: Because I ain't got nothin' better to do.

Which makes me think of Osama Bin Laden.

Now, don't freak out and think I'm about to paint Bin Laden as some sort of admirable anti-hero. Don't worry. I can tell the difference between the two. Wales is steeped in good ol' boy American country morality, while Osama bin Laden is an evil towelhead – the devil incarnate – a bloodthirsty savage bent on destroying our very way of life. Sure, I know that. Bin Laden isn't some lone guerrilla just wanting to be left alone. Innocent till wronged. Bin Laden is terrorist writ large, smashing planes into office buildings, inspiring innocents to wear Semtex sportswear, and most recently planning the creation of a biological weapon that would turn the whole populace of America into flesh dripping, zombie-like cannibals. Right.

"Buzzards gotta eat, same as worms."

No, I won't attempt to humanize or sympathize with bin Laden specifically. But Wales does raise a more general question about terrorists. How can we shun terrorists and yet admire a character like Wales? We recoil in horror when we contemplate that there may be people out there that hate what the USA stands for and are hell bent on revenge; but we readily identify with Wales who's one defining characteristic is that he hates what the USA stands for and is hell bent on revenge.

Maybe we like Wales because he's good at what he does. We hate terrorists because they are bumbling. The terrorists we despise are as inept as Frank Serpico. Supposedly these are bloodthirsty, stop at nothing criminals, but they kill less people than are killed by tippy vending machine accidents. They are typified by a handful of fools that plan an attack on an army base, make DVDs of their training, and have copies burned at Best Buy. And what about suicide bombers? How dumb a plan is that? Can you see Josey Wales as a suicide bomber? Didn't think so. Not that he isn't capable of seemingly suicidal attacks. Just that they are always with an edge. There's no edge in a suicide bombing. It's good to have an edge. Sun at your back. Now, spit!

No, there's no loss eradicating scary amateur criminals, but no pride in it either.

It doesn't appear in the film script, but in the Forrest Carter novel on which Outlaw Josey Wales is based, Wales recalls that his father taught him to be "proud of your friends, but be prouder of your enemies". This advice seems to demand that one chooses one's enemies wisely, such that they are worth your time, and loss of your immortal soul, to fight them.

But not everyone feels the need to be proud of one's enemies. The red leg Captain Terrill doesn't. He has a 'higher' purpose. He says, "Doin' right ain't got no end," which sounds just like the party line in the war on terror. But Fletcher, a most excellently conflicted character, feels differently. When the Senator Lane observes that Wales is headed to hell, Fletcher replies, "He'll be waiting for us there Senator."

Wales himself has a well defined sense of laissez fair justice. He never kills an Indian (nor has any Eastwood character), not necessarily out of fear or undue respect, but simply preferring that white and red men live together without butchering one another. Leave him be and he'll leave you be. He's not necessarily a defender of the meek and helpless. Consider the scene when Wales walks in on the rape of the Indian girl. He shows an expression of impatience and disapproval, but does not intervene till one of the men threatens him.

But he saves the Kansas pilgrims.

Yes its a national contradiction to idealize and admire our own home-grown guerrilla terrorists when we despise foreign guerrilla terrorists with similar motives and similar goals. I think this contradiction goes to the heart of our national identity, and it fuels a lot of the divisiveness and polarization we display in political discourse. As a nation, we see ourselves as pragmatic individualists, and we like to reward people that take individual initiative. But, by the same token, we value unity, consensus, conformity, majority rule, and the rule of law (both secular and sacred). We treasure justice, but there are those among us that are monomaniacs of a special sort that feel it's their duty to deliver justice far and wide. Everyone must surrender and conform to their self revealed moral code; any dissent or true cultural differences are heresy that must be snuffed out like so many Indian tribes.

In this internal conflict, the Civil War remains unresolved still. Fundamental issues in dispute during that war remain undecided. How much authority does the central government have over regional preferences? How much control does it have over "commerce"? Over individual rights in matters not specifically given to the state? Although the central government expanded its authority dramatically since the war, Lysander Spooner's arguments stand as an unanswered unanswered subtext in many objections to that expansion.

Don't count on that tension dissipating any time soon. The political parties of today have taken these distinct and important issues, chopped them up, and made them into a salad of their own opportunistic concoction: one part inconvenient truth, one part sweet talk, and 5 parts roughage.

"I say that big talk's worth doodley squat."

When it opened, The Outlaw Josey Wales may have been seen as a political film, a thinly veiled allegory about Vietnam and its aftermath. Today, I'm looking at it through the lens of the War on Terror and see the same epic themes just as fresh and challenging.

Someday, maybe the Fletchers among us will tell us that the war is over, and we'll hear Wales say: "I reckon so. I guess we all died a little in that damn war."

Posted May 31, 2007 at 01:58 UTC, 1743 words,  [/dan]  Permalink