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Feature by: Jack Foley
HE may be playing a no-nonsense gunslinger in his latest movie,
Open Range, but Oscar-winning director, Kevin Costner, is similarly
no-nonsense, in real-life, when discussing the sometimes thorny
issue of his career.
Having been thrust onto Hollywood’s A-list following back-to-backs
hits, The Untouchables, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, The Bodyguard
and Dances With Wolves, the star suffered a backlash to subsequent
projects, Waterworld and The Postman, which left many questioning
whether he would ever rediscover the glory days of old.
With Open Range, however, he appears to have done just that,
as the film harks back to an old-fashioned school of film-making,
where character takes precedence, and merely serves to heighten
the impact of the gunfight which brings things to a close.
Costner stars alongside screen veteran, Robert Duvall, as one
of two cowboys who are forced to take on a town’s corrupt
sheriff, following a weather-induced stop-off on the nearby open
range.
The film is designed, in part, as a homage to some of the traditional
westerns of the past, such as High Noon and The Searchers, as
well as Duvall’s own Lonesome Dove mini-series, and it is
brought to a close by arguably one of the best gunfights in Western
history.
Yet while critics are hailing the film as a return to form for
Costner, as both director and actor, the star, himself, remains
a little perplexed by much of the media which surrounds him.
"I wasn't aware of how The Postman was received," he
replied, when asked whether Open Range was an attempt to prove
himself, once more.
"I liked Postman, but I'm a realist, and know that there
were some that didn’t…. There might be a revisionist
view of it someday, with people who look at it for what it is,
and how it was done, but I've not been really in step with trying
to anticipate what's the smartest move to make, or what's in vogue
in terms of the commercial.
"If my career is up against the wall, which I don't believe
that it is, but if someone would see it that way, and I can see
why they might, they'd just want to go, 'why Kevin, why would
you make a Western?'
"I just believe in the genre. I am also a realist. I don't
feel I need to make it for the mass audience, although I do believe
it could find one.
"I believe it has an entertainment value and I made it for
that reason. I didn't make it as a valentine to myself, or to
the West. I made it as a really solid piece of entertainment."
Hence, it wasn’t any particular allegiance to the Western
that compelled Costner to take to the saddle again, but rather
the challenges offered by filming it - given the difficult nature
of life at the time.
"I think a movie really has to wrap itself up in entertainment
and a Western is a very hard thing to do because most people think
of it as a simple art form.
"They even think of the time as being simple when, in fact,
I would argue that it is not. We are in a time that is much more
simple.
"For example, if you have a problem, a real problem, you
can get the police to handle it. Or if you have a problem, you
can get a lawyer, or an agent, or a PR person to actually put
a spin on a real bad situation, or your behaviour when in fact,
in the West, you had to arbitrate your problems yourself.
"You often found yourself in a moral position where it put
you outside the law. That is not a cliché, it was fact
of life, every day.
"Because we know that powerful people usually control the
law, and people who control the law, if they are not incredibly
evolved, and most people are not, then they begin to distort the
law for their own uses and when they do that, small people get
stepped on and those small people either accept it, but then there's
always those few, sometimes like a Charlie or a Boss who can't
abide that at a certain point.
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"And my character, Charlie, who is clearly equipped to actually
handle violence, you see early on that he is not sure that starting
this violence with these men over cows is really worth it, being
a man who has seen a lot of violence, but because his friend can't
abide by that they have a relationship that is forged.
"These relationships were forged ever so quietly, as you
realise the men don't even know that much about each other.
"They simply know they can trust each other and I think
that's where the Western's real appeal is. It's a very refreshing
quality to know that the man or the woman to the left or right
of you will stand by you in the most critical of times, and I
think that will always be the appeal of Westerns."
And when the time comes for these two men to stand together,
it is all the more easier for audiences to empathise and root
for them, particularly given the intensity of the subsequent battle.
Costner, quite rightly, is being hailed for delivering the type
of gunfight which would make Sam Peckinpah proud, yet he remains
equally as bullish as to whether this was a deliberate ploy, aimed
at redefining violence in the movie.
"The staple of the Western is that you've got to have the
gunfight and I promised that I would. I just liked investing in
the characters and the story. The plot swings on a very quiet
moment, you know, maybe one that's not even recognisable to whoever
watches it, which is simply that the open range creates the plot
of the movie.
"It gets the wagon stuck, the wagon can't move, the cattle
scatter and clearly its going to take five to six days to gather
up these animals, which was a historical event.
"The West is not fairy tale, it's what happened, and in
doing that, they realised that they are going to have to get supplies,
and so when one man leaves to town, that's when the shoe drops,
ever so quietly, but it drops and during that time we get to know
these characters.
"Hopefully, that's what I like to invest in, who they are
and their sense of humour, and also try to create moments of violence.
"But potential violence can be as satisfying as violence.
For instance, when the four men appear on the hill, with their
faces covered like cowards, they are very threatening; there's
the awesome promise of violence at that moment, and in this movie
we resist creating a gunfight there, we simply have them evaporate
over the hill and by doing that, in a way it's creepier.
"It's creepy when people kind of loom over you, and out
of that comes the common sense between the two other characters,
that they should go and meet this violence head on, and, of course,
they go find him in the trees and I think that the way men arbitrate
their problems there is quite interesting.
"I styled that scene a little bit after the Oxbow Incident,
where they come upon those horse thieves, and how Robert Duvall
takes charge at that particular moment, but I think the threat
of violence always existed in the West, simply because men wore
guns and that threat existed, and so the shoot out will always
be the staple of the Western.
"If you don't have it, you don't really have a Western -
you have some other genre. So I did want to put my stamp on the
violence."
Costner did, however, want to show ‘the vulgarity of violence’
and the ‘chaos of it’ explaining: "I wanted you
to feel the ground between the combatants, because often, if you
feel the ground between me and a person against the wall, you
can tell the ballet that exists there has a real kind of ugliness
to it, and certainly when Charlie kills the man whose holding
Sue, he does it at a point blank range, and I kind of wanted to
debunk the theory of the hero - that Charlie is willing to shoot
somebody in the foot, he's willing to draw first, he's willing
to shoot somebody point blank.
"He's even willing to kill a mortally wounded man with the
idea that he doesn't want to face him again, but I think what
happens is, because we've invested in who Charlie is, as a character,
we don't actually hold that against him, we've actually come to
realise that he's been trying to tell us who he is."
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