Sydney Pollack: The Electric Horseman
If you follow this blog at all, then you probably know that
I am not someone who favors plot or story over other elements in film. I don’t need
a mind-bender to keep me interested; in fact, I have no use for movies like The Usual Suspects, Inception, and films of their ilk. Mostly it’s because I feel like
a lot of those kinds of films (with the exception of Inception which had great stunts) use their twisty storylines as a
way to mask their film’s deficiencies. Sometimes the actors can make it work,
and sometimes the film just falls completely flat because I’m spending the entirety
of the movie trying to figure out just what the hell is going on instead of
getting invested in the characters. There are countless filmmakers that I don’t
need to waste your time by listing their names that can balance this, but I
generally don’t look for films with “interesting” storylines” to draw me in.
So what am I getting at? Well, by selecting Sydney Pollack
as my director for this retrospective I have dug myself into a bit of a hole compared
to the other two filmmakers I’ve previously covered in this projected (truncated
retrospectives on Oliver Stone and Ken Russell) because of the fact that I love
the simplicity of Pollack’s films so much
(there really is nothing “twisty” about his plots; they’re simple, classic
storylines) I often find myself lacking for content beyond the general plot
synopsis. The Electric Horseman is no
different: a film with all of Pollack’s favorite themes, two great lead
performances, a storyline that is nothing new, and a small chase scene to break
up the monotony. It’s not that it’s a bad movie (just like Bobby Deerfield wasn’t a bad movie), but it lacks the elegiac tone
of something akin to it like Junior
Bonner. Where Peckinpah’s film was an elegy to the Old West as the New West
pervaded it, The Electric Horseman is
similar in tone (Las Vegas artifice/corporate exploitation of an old cowboy’s
morals is similar to the ever-changing rodeo circuit and quickly evolving New
West Junior confronts in Junior Bonner)
but acts more as an adventure/buddy picture;
a little more light-hearted than previous Pollack/Redford collaboration, Jeremiah Johnson, but very similar in
tone (both films were shot at Zion National Park in Utah, so there is a similar
feel in setting).
