The next month or so is offering up a veritable feast of cinema that hits the black on the Frontier Partisans thematic target — even when it’s not classically “frontier.” Most of it is dropping on Netflix, which has become a real storytelling powerhouse — and hats off to ’em.
Here we have Godless, a real-deal Western “limited series.”
Frank Griffin, an outlaw terrorizing the 1880s American West, hunts down Roy Goode, his partner turned enemy. Roy hides out at a ranch as Frank’s chase leads him to La Belle, New Mexico — a town mysteriously made up entirely of women.
Godless
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My Pure Land: Defending the homestead is a classic frontier theme, from the forests of Kaintuck to the veld of South Africa — to… Pakistan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETT0Pt9HmrU
Based on a true story. A young woman called Nazo and her mother and sister are called to defend their home after a bitter family feud leads to her father’s incarceration. In their isolated farmhouse in Pakistan, the women find themselves surrounded by armed men hired by their Uncle Mehrban to take back the land. When Nazo’s resistance leaves two of the men dead, an enraged Mehrban calls in a local ragtag militia – two hundred armed bandits. But even with only a handful of bullets left, Nazo refuses to give in…
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Alias Grace: An Upper Canada crime story…
Alias Grace is based on Margaret Atwood’s award-winning novel. The six-hour miniseries follows Grace Marks, a poor, young Irish immigrant and domestic servant in Upper Canada who, along with stable hand James McDermott, was convicted of the brutal murders of their employer, Thomas Kinnear, and his housekeeper, Nancy Montgomery, in 1843.
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Mudbound: The rural American South always a frontier region.
Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband’s Mississippi Delta farm, a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family’s struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land. Jamie McAllan, Laura’s brother-in-law, is everything her husband is not – charming and handsome, but he is haunted by his memories of combat. Ronsel Jackson, eldest son of the black sharecroppers who live on the McAllan farm, now battles the prejudice in the Jim Crow South.
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1922 — A farmer pens a confession admitting to his wife’s murder, but her death is just the beginning of a macabre tale. Based on a novella by Stephen King.
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Damnation: The Midwest could get a little “frontier,” too…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbO_V6oDi5M
Seth Davenport is a man masquerading as a small-town Iowa preacher in hopes of starting a full-blown insurrection against the status quo. Focused on his mission, he is unaware that an industrialist tycoon has hired a professional strikebreaker named Creeley Turner to stop the uprising by any means necessary. But unbeknownst to those around them, these two men already share a secret, bloody past. This epic saga about the secret history of the 1930s American heartland centers on the mythic conflict and bloody struggle between big money and the downtrodden, God and greed, charlatans and prophets.
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The Punisher: Frank Castle is a vigilante on an urban frontier, in what Tom Russell called the biggest border town in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIY6zFL95hE
I love the work of Irish writer Garth Ennis. His run on The Punisher MAX was a dark, neo-noir take on a Marvel character that had no bullshit in it at all. The Netflix series seems to be based off of Ennis’s work.
Matthew says
It’s interesting how Western/Frontier themes are becoming more popular. Not to long ago the Western was considered a dead genre. I also remember that movie critics were more likely to bemoan the absence of musicals than Westerns. Never understood critics.
JimC says
I like that the scope of the “Western” movie is expanding in both time period and geography. Of course, I would prefer that the genre be referred to as “frontier” movies, but that’s a pointless argument.
Matthew says
Well, the term Frontier could be applied to a wide range of settings. Western would mean the American West arguably including Canada. Anything in Africa or Asia would have to be Frontier. At least, that’s what I think.
Plots can be transferred to different places. Like how Yojimbo was the bases for A Fistful of Dollars. Red Harvest may have been the basis for Yojimbo.
Matthew says
Off topic, but you might enjoy this. It’s about UFC fighters going through the Marine Corp Martial Arts Program. There’s a “Last of the Mohicans” part where the do MA in the woods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RPiA27uC8A
JimC says
Fun. I’ll check it out.
Eccentric Cowboy says
Matthew up there makes a good point. But some ideas are just plain too good to die! As much as the “civilized” folks like to think we’re calming down and tame, there’s too much adventurous blood pulsing through the veins of bright men and women for the frontier to truly fade. It’s part of who a lot of us are, and if the civilized folk decide to stop making them, then the rest of us will.
Reminds me of how the Winchester lever action and the 41 mag were declared dead one time after another, only to resurface again. The echoes of the Old West are simply to relevant and true to go away. What with so much corruption in office and elsewhere, the tales of good men rising up from the soil to fight corrupt men still resonates just as strong today as it did back then. Heck, that’s what made Westerns famous to start with! It was an idea that struck a chord in the hearts of people all over the world, and still does now.
So while the dressings might change, the frontier will never truly go away. Can’t stop the signal Mal!
JimC says
As Josey Wales would say, reckon so.
Matthew says
Speaking of Winchesters and Frontier Cinema. Anyone ever seen Winchester ’73 with Jimmy Stewart. In it, Stewart basically plays a Clint Eastwood role. He’s a bounty hunter seeking revenge on the murderer of his father. Not the typical role for him.
Of course, I noticed a long time ago that contrary to popular opinion, John Wayne played a lot of anti-heroes. See The Searchers.
LeighBrackettsLand says
I watched Winchester ’73 recently. That’s how you do a MacGuffin Plot *right*.
JimC says
Right! Welcome to the campfire.
Matthew says
Yup!
J.F. Bell says
If there’s one overarching point to be drawn here, it’s that only a fool takes the movement of the clock’s hands for progress.
Pick up a Glock with one hand and a 1920s-vintage Colt Government Model with the other and tell me again how far we’ve advanced. Or an Hamilton and a new Timex. There’s no modern vessel in the world that can challenge a clipper ship for grace, and nothing I’ve found yet can match the mechanical art of a steam locomotive at work.
I’ve long suspected that what most consider the ‘quality’ of modern society isn’t so much its value as its disposability and ease of replacement.
JimC says
You have a fine way with the language, Mr. Bell.
J.F. Bell says
Practice and keenly refined cynicism, amigo.
This isn’t the age of my choosing, but it’s the one I got. That line of thinking is one I suspect the regulars here may understand very well.
Nothing to do but press on and make of it what we can. Fortunately, as was said, so long as the mindset remains we will always have our frontiers, one way or another.
JimC says
I think all of us here feel that way to a large degree.
Matthew says
Personally, I don’t think I would be content in any age.
Traven Torsvan says
The urban frontier trope actually goes back to the 19th century. Eugene Sue’s massive serial novel, the Mysteries of Paris, basically transferred the themes of the Leatherstocking Tales to post revolutionary Paris.
JimC says
Well ain’t that something. I must explore this; it is new to me.