• The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 8/14/17 (Mon)
• Once Upon a Time in the West, 8/19/17 (Sat)

These films, said to be the pinnacle of the Italian “spaghetti Westerns” (known oddly in Japan as “macaroni Westerns”), had been strongly recommended by a European friend. I was skeptical. The Western is probably the most distinctive film genre of the American cinema given the phenomenon at its core: the vastness of the landscapes, the lure of uncultivated and unknown territories, the opportunity to create new societies from nothing but soil and daring – there is nothing remotely comparable in the European experience. The bulk of settlers were not running from persecution or war but, piqued by curiosity or ambition or boredom, toward the infinite possibilities of a new life that they themselves would have to build. The courage of those willing to plunge into the void on the basis of sheer hope is a situation that lends itself to broad archetypal characters, and the best of the Westerns reflect this sense of a land still coming together, fueled by an optimism built into the American psyche that anything is possible. I was curious how a non-American would approach this.

The results were fascinating. The films, both by the Italian director Sergio Leone, reminded me of 19th-century Kabuki writer Kawatake Mokuami, whose tales of dried-up samurai and low-life villains punctured the heroics of classic Kabuki drama.   Continue reading →