The Wild West, Folks.
I want to thank everyone who came out to the screening of McCabe and Mrs. Miller last night at the Aero Theater for American Cinematheque. It was an amazing print. I felt like I was seeing it for the first time.
I am obsessed with that film. I have been obsessed with it since I was in high school. Last night was probably the third time I’ve seen it in a theater. I get more out of the movie every time I see it. I think that’s why I’m obsessed with it. When I saw it when I was younger it made me realize that there was so much I didn’t understand. That film is art and it can be deep and work on many levels. They are still revealing themselves.
Real works of art grow with you. They change as you change. You can go back to them your whole life and more will be revealed.
My mentor Gus Blaisdell who owned a bookstore in Albuquerque encouraged my obsession. He told me I should write a paper on the movie to be published. I can’t remember whether I was in high school or maybe my first year of college. I couldn’t write a paper. I never got the hang of it. I don’t think I could do it now. The prospect terrifies me.
I think the thing that really pulls me into the film every time is the humanity of it. It’s a revisionist Western where the anti hero, McCabe, played by Warren Beatty, is somehow painfully human in his plight. The film is shot in a naturalistic way, in sepia tone, in a small, messy western town. I would say if you break it down it’s about the difficulties of starting a small business when you’re up against corporate interests.
It simultaneously shatters and promotes the myth of the Wild West. It explores individualism being crushed by corporate greed. It deals with unrequited but somehow deep love between an emotionally stunted man and a prostitute. It is set in the final phase of Manifest Destiny and shows how inconsequential the little guy is in the face of corporate expansion in the name of progress and how empty the promise of religion is. The third act is driven by morally bankrupt guns for hire that each represent a different archetype of the old west.
Every character is a fully realized human being somehow.
I have been deeply focused on McCabe’s hat and jacket for years. Wondering if the visual language of them on screen was intended to suggest something other than the period. A bowler and a bearskin coat. I believe in film, there is no way not to associate the bowler/derby hat with Chaplin. McCabe is sort of a bumbling clown that somehow effectively punches up with his clumsiness. Not unlike Chaplin’s Little Tramp. The bearskin coat is huge and cocoons his whole being. He is a clown in bear’s clothing.
Ultimately, McCabe succeeds in winning the fight, but dies in the process. The film goes out from Mrs. Miller’s point of view, as played by Julie Christie, in an opiated stupor. We see a slowly turning small ceramic vessel that looks like the world spinning from outer space. Time goes on. All things must pass.
I can’t say enough about how great it has been in these trying times to watch old masterpieces. It is encouraging me to try to put my phone down and find a pace of life that isn’t driven by information detritus pummeling my mind and mediated social engagement that works in all the time zones at once and makes our brains incapable of sitting in ourselves while sitting in the real pace of our lives. It steals our time and our lives.
Today I talk to Jeremy Allen White. Nice guy. On Thursday I have a very deep talk with Regina King. Both terrific talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
