Director Alan Pakula and cinematographer Gordon Willis reteamed for the revisionist Western Comes a Horseman, which on the face of it, seems like a project a bit out of their comfort zone on initial inspection. But upon actual viewing, Comes a Horseman is a fascinating piece of work that set out to demystify the genre, joining a group of gritty westerns that traded off of iconic imagery while skewering the very conventions that they stridently presented. Certainly not a traditional Western but set in the American West of the 1940’s, the narrative pivots on two ranchers (James Caan and Jane Fonda, both steadfast and excellent) who operate a small farm and who become threatened by economic hardships and the greedy plans of a local land baron (Jason Robards, commanding and menacing). Fonda was at her career peak when she signed on for this post-modern genre item, having just won an Oscar for Hal Ashby’s masterpiece Coming Home, and the film reunited her with Pakula, who had directed her in Klute, which was the film she won her first Oscar for. It also reteamed her with Robards, as the two had co-starred in Fred Zinnemann’s 1977 box office hit Julia. Pakula and Willis brought a more simple visual style to Comes a Horseman than one might expect, and while the two talents certainly paid respect to the milieu that they were working in, they opted for a more reserved aesthetic, stressing striking yet unadorned widescreen compositions as opposed to anything fancy or overtly ostentatious. There’s visual sweep to the imagery but at the same time one gets the sense that Willis was interested in subverting expectations, even while the filmmakers tipped their hat to classic staples like Red River. A film ripe for rediscovery, it’s available on DVD, but a Blu-ray would really make this underrated effort pop and sing.
Podcasting Them Softly 