Sunday, Sep. 20, 2009

'Great Silence' blurs line between good, evil

By Ed Robertson, special to the Herald

Tempted as I am to break Western Month to cover the works of the departed Patrick Swayze, a man whose films I only just began to love, I am, like the gunslingers of the Wild West, honorbound to see my mission to the very end. This isn't the only way I'm like those men of yore, but since I promised my editor I wouldn't mention soiled doves again for the rest of the year, let's move on.

To 1968's The Great Silence. So what if I already hit up director Sergio Corbucci to start this thing off? I'm not gonna risk vengeance from the imagination-ghost of Silence just because I talked about his creator once before.

Bounty hunter Klaus Kinski is running wild in the snowy Utah hills, killing starving bandits and cashing in on the reward. Powerless to stop Kinski's legal but savage tactics, the bereaved families seek help from Jean-Louis Trintignant, a mute hero dedicated to fighting for justice.

Or so they say, anyway; Trintignant can't exactly say anything for himself. That's a bold move, making your hero unable to speak. He'll be irresistible to the ladies, sure (wait, he won't even talk to me? How confident is that?), but it's a lot harder to carry a movie when you can't so much as ask which way to the wrongdoer.

That would explain why Corbucci spends so much camera time with Kinski, a playful, violent, wide-eyed killer who would shoot you for sport if he weren't already so busy shooting all those other people. He's kind of like the Joker in The Dark Knight, only instead of terrorizing a city of millions he's content to pass the time blasting a few horse-eating hill-people. Still, he's a whale of a villain, a bright bad man who needs to be brought to justice but who you'd kind of hate to see get taken down.

But Corbucci's west isn't some boring ol' world of good vs. evil. The townsfolk talk about Trintignant like he's nursing baby birds back to health and passing out free ice cream, but he's a killer, too, provoking the men he wants dead into drawing on him and then gunning them down in "self defense." By circumstance or temperament, everyone's corrupt. Sheriff Frank Wolff might be the only decent man in town, but he's hamstrung by the same laws he's bound to uphold.

That results in a more cohesive story than Corbucci's famous Django while sacrificing none of the gunplay or bizarre hand trauma. (Seriously, an unreal amount of hands get wrecked up in his movies.) The Great Silence's knockout ending is as desolate as its snow-drowned mountains.