Latest Updates - William Goldman

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

Not what I thought it was going to be.

Finally, after all these years, I got around to watching this...

...And several things struck me about it, that were opposed to the idea of what I thought this movie was going to be:

Firstly, I thought it was just going to a straight up meat and potatoes western, shot, and presented in the usual fashion - sweeping scores, dramatic / epic set piece hero shots, and the kind of bore-fest I expect from the genre (A lot of these bore me to tears, so this explains why I avoided this...

...Then the story, I thought was just a fun buddy movie with lots of laughs and capers and such... fluff.

On both of these counts, I was wholly wrong, as this rather glacial "modern" western is, but for the Bacharach song, and another piece over the ingenious segment of a narrative sequence sepia stills showing the pair's transitional phase between their American life and that in Bolivia, is devoid of music altogether, having only the ambient sounds of what's in frame at any given time...

...And what cinematography!

Possibly some of the best I've ever seen.

Rather than the sun drenched romantic western-scapes I'd predicted, the washed out, "thin" colour palettes, the sepia / murky brown segment at the beginning, and the woodland scenes are nothing short of art.

And all to tell the story of two, only superficially breezy and sparky individuals' deeper tragic nature, and sense of fate, as the world is changing, and there ain't no place for them anymore.

It occurred to me also - that is struck me quite a lot, actually, that most of my preconceptions came from the fact that whenever scenes from this are shown in any videos, discussions of great movies etc. it's only ever the scene with the bicycle and Bacharach song, or their jump of the cliff into the river... no other scenes that I can recall ever get shown, or talked about, and so I think this gave me a very false notion of what to expect.

You'd think I'd learn by now not to go by what others say about a movie, but take the time to sit and experience these things for myself... lesson learnt! :)