Been getting more into the photography of cinema, ‘cinematography’ if you will, recently.

Was so inspired by the photographic look and framing of Che:

Che and the Creation of a Style

that I’m beginning to reevaluate my thoughts about what film is, and what it should be.

When I first saw the Ed Harris directed ‘Appaloosa’ I left the theatre thinking, yes, ok, that was fine.  Nothing to write home about as they say, but a good, solid story – nice hair and mustache on Viggo Mortensen and some nice locations.

But it stuck in my mind, mainly because of the New Mexico locations.  I lived for a while in New Mex and have family there, so I visit often.  The northern part of the state, (above Albuquerque), is especially ‘Hollywood Cinematic’ and has been home to many a film set, (I recommend the book ‘Cinema Southwest’ if you’re into visiting Western locations).

So I had fun with the New Mexico vibe of the picture, (Viggo Mortensen’s character Everett Hitch remarks that he shot a man in Tres Piedras; this I found enjoyable as have driven through there many times, once stopping to look at antiques at the Pink Schoolhouse Gallery, only to be bitten by the owner’s dog; as I was bandaging the wound, the owner of said dog asked me what I did – when I mumbled ‘director’ through the pain, he mentioned that ‘Spanking the Monkey’ auteur David O. Russell was in earlier that day; apparently he was not bit by the dog – perhaps the animal could smell the ‘hasn’t directed a feature film yet’ scent on me).

Anyhew, when I initially watched Appaloosa I enjoyed it just fine, though was put off by the strange look of normally wonderful actress Renée Zellweger’s face, (too much botox? anyway – the face doesn’t move – see framegrab above).  This is a shame and the tendency of Hollywood actresses, (and actors – Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘jaw line sharpening’ was a horrible distraction to me in ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’), to get this kind of work done does not speak well to our popular culture.

But, I remembered the lovely compositions of the film, as shot by Dean Semler – the great lenser who did such good work on Mad Max 2 and 3, (and of course was the DP on ‘Waterworld’, the ‘Mad Max 2 on Water’ rip-off – though I recall hearing that Dean said that the producers of ‘Waterworld’ never even brought up the Mad Max pictures; which I find curious), and I decided to watch it again.

This time with the sound off.

And discovered a lovely little picture.

The film is under populated.  This isn’t an authentic old west here.  There’s only a few speaking roles.  Of course, with the sound down there’s no speaking roles.  With no audio the picture is liberated from itself, from the demand of script, from the demand of motivation.

It becomes landscape and man as landscape, man as nature.  Feels like ‘The Thin Red Line’ or ‘The New World’ – man as animal.

Man is an animal in this quiet version of Appaloosa.  We’re animals and alone, in the end.  Viggo rides off, we don’t know where to and neither does he.

Beautiful.