Cormac McCarthy had no hand in the production of The Homesman, but his shadow stretches long over Tommy Lee Jones’ neo-Western. The spare landscape, lensed with wintery clarity by Rodrigo Pietro, embodies the harsh tone of the author’s prose while also allowing for the glimpses of poetry that pervade his writing. The setting is, of…
Like the paper flowers that William Blake (Johnny Depp) finds absent natural scent, Dead Man is built on self-conscious artificiality. Jim Jarmusch’s neo-Western is as influenced by woodcut animation or a matinee performance of a silent-movie serial; where Sergio Leone’s post-modern approach the Western exaggerated the cinematic tropes of the genre, Jarmusch filters those conventions…
Blood Meridian is a fitting title for Cormac McCarthy’s brutal anti-western. The book is heavy with blood, thick streams of the arterial liquid pooling and coagulating at its dark heart. McCarthy wields words like a surgeon’s blade, finding spare beauty in unforgiving landscapes lit by blue flashes of lightning or unforgiving men unleashing violence for…
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