A lonely figure on horseback traverses an imposing landscape of mesas and mountains. A gunslinger prepares to draw his gun on an opponent in a dramatic showdown. A wagon train moves across a prairie searching for land, a new life and prosperity. These are a few on the conventions of the Western genre. When they are combined into a unified whole, you get the saga of the Old West.
Conventions of the Western genre: Gunslingers, the cavalry to the rescue & wagon trains
Kevin Costner has been a proponent of the saga of the Old West and the mythology of the foundation of a nation that was to become the United States of America. His folkloric stories, including Dances With Wolves, Open Range and Silverado, attest to his absorption with the Old West. His latest venture, Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 is a grand title for a grand project.
Costner is both ambitious and audacious.
Costner’s plan is to produce four movies in the Horizon saga, each one a three hour epic. Chapter 1 clocks in at three hours and one minute. Chapter 2 has been filmed and will be released in August 2024. The success of the first two movies will determine if the final two chapters will be produced. Chapter 1 cost more than $100 million dollars. Its release has grossed $22 million worldwide so far. There’s a lot at stake financially for the studio and Costner personally.
"On September 9, 1776, the Continental Congress formally declares the name of the new nation to be the “United States” of America. This replaced the term “United Colonies,” which had been in general use".
From https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/congress-renames-the-nation-united-states-of-america
(See link below for more information, including a short 3 minute video explaining how The United States of America was chosen)
The Old West in the United States is definitely a place of myth and folklore, from settlers claiming land while displacing indigenous tribes to gunfighters and cattle rustling. Folk tales usually celebrate the overcoming of obstacles and adversity. They deal with triumph in the face of hardship and tragedy. The tragedy behind the displacement of indigenous people is a concern that has changed in contemporary times, although prominent directors, such as John Ford, of classic Westerns, such as Stagecoach, Little Big Man, Cheyenne Autumn and The Searchers, have dealt with the issue over many decades.
Black & White Archival photos |Colour photo--Native American Heritage Day
Native Americans | Apache
Photos: Public Domain
Many film directors’ approaches to the presentation of Native Americans has been altered to include Native Americans as performers and directors (https://www.nyfa.edu/student-resources/native-american-filmmakers/ ) with input by indigenous councils regarding the depiction of their nations and issues surrounding their plight represented from their perspective (LINK to Eclectic Stefan’s review of Killers of the Flower Moon).
Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 encapsulates several storylines and intercuts between the events and characters of each storyline across the movie’s three hour length. Horizon refers to the name of a land development that promises prosperity for those who venture into this unknown land. It is a difficult environment for the interlopers while the Native Americans know the land well. It is their home and provides them with sustenance and their needs for survival. Horizon also relates to looking ahead to what is in the distance and moving towards it with anticipation and hope, even when that horizon promises danger and unknown outcomes.
The movie unfolds with surveyors laying peg lines to delineate plots of land in line with building a town and residences for future white settlers. The surveyors soon discover they will only require a plot that is six feet long and six feet deep to accommodate their needs because the settlement they are subdividing resides on the lands of the formidable Apache nation. Once the town is built, the clash between the Apache nation and the white intruders results in a brutal and deadly confrontation. Confrontation also occurs between the older chief, who recognises that the white intruders will continue to arrive and cannot be stopped, and his more volatile son, who wants to fight and decimate those settlers.
Another timeline includes a mother and her children who survive the furious battle between the trespassers and indigenous people. They relocate to the safety of a frontier fort under the auspices of the army. A romance develops between a cavalry captain and the widow. It feels jarring that the wife never seems to suffer the hardships and deprivations of living in a harsh land.
Her appearance conveys the image of a stereotypical wife from a 1950s television commercial proselytising for frying pans and washing machines. Even a couple of dastardly, dishevelled and villainous outlaw brothers look pristine in their nastiness, a form of villainy chic that you might find in a Calvin Klein underwear advertisement.
Old West Chic
A third plot line follows a woman with a baby who escapes a violent homelife while being pursued by her rogue, uncivilised and brutal brothers-in-law. Kevin Costner’s lone cowboy with a heart of gold, iron fists and a quick draw with a pistol is instrumental in saving the woman and baby while evading the fury of the vicious brothers. The final timeline towards the end of the movie introduces a new group of interlopers travelling across Apache lands to claim a piece of Apache land.
Multiple storylines: Wagon trains, the Apache nation, and a lone gunman
You need to be prepared to recognise, remember and retain the characters and how they relate to the stories being told across multiple plotlines. Sometimes that is challenging because, even at three hours, Costner’s editing creates gaps in timelines and events. Horizon is a classic story of conflict and survival incorporating environmental hardships, human tribulations and personal challenges.
Costner’s plan to build a saga of America as a wild land developing into a mature nation is what Kevin Costner is aspiring to recreate. He is sympathetic in his depiction of the Apache nation. He depicts the impact of change from both sides, although the Apache’s plight is more slight in its impact and content.
Costner faced a monumental task to fulfil the saga of the United States and it’s origins in the Unified Colonial states, the expansion to the West, the Native American viewpoint, the Civil War, the railroad, the gold rush, and legendary figures such a Buffalo Bill, Chief Sitting Bull and Geronimo, into a sprawling saga.
Therein lies the problem. You can’t do it all.
To truly present an American Saga in one 3 hour movie, or even four movies at 3 hours each, is impossible. You can only ever be selective about who and what you choose to depict and that will only ever be a sliver of the entirety of what happened and the wide range of perspectives from which to tell the stories. I’m not talking documentary style, although Ken Burns has attempted it in a number of his sprawling projects, such as his Civil War and The West series.
The only way to examine the saga of America cinematically is through consideration of the canon of the Western genre. Watch films by, for and about Native American filmmakers and Hollywood filmmakers. Don’t forget that when the Continental Congress decided on the name United States of America, there were recriminations from Canada and South America because they were also America. That, in itself, is another entire consideration.
Once you have filled your head with these films, which will take a lifetime’s viewing, you will then have a true sense of an American saga that communicates the nature, range and extent of what constitutes the United States of America, the Old West, the US Civil War, and the history of Native America.
Kevin Costner is trying to do what the series 1883, 1923 and Yellowstone presented on streaming services. Watch those series if you want a saga of the united colonies of America that became the United States of America.
Costner could have saved himself a lot of time, effort and money if he’d made four separate films based on the storylines in Horizon: the wagon train, the Apaches, the early white settlers and the desperado brothers, perhaps giving each a variation on the ideas, themes and stories running parallel to one another. Then again, Horizon is Costner’s project so it’s his movies, not mine. We should consider his intentions, not what we think it should be or could have been.
There’s nothing wrong with audacity and ambition. Costner’s Horizon:An American Saga—Chapter 1 is approachable but slated for disappointment because there’s no way one movie or four movies or 20 movies can encapsulate the saga that covers the United States of America and its movement westward. It’s like using a one person tent to house an elephant. You can do it but some part of the elephant will always be sticking out from the tent. Kevin Costner has squeezed four plotlines into one movie but bits and pieces of each movie are always vying for time and space.
Don’t get me wrong. Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 has all the hallmarks of a beautifully shot and designed Western and I definitely enjoy a Western. It's like watching four movies at the same time on one screen.
Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1 adds to the Western genre canon of movies but in no way does it provide a cinematic glue to link the entire history and storyline that embodies the Old West and the formation of the United States. In the long run, it is an idealised view of the foundations of the USA using conventional, sanitised recurrent themes of the Western genre.
All production photos and movie trailer © 2024 Territory Pictures & New Line Cinema
FILM EXTRAS
The Saga of the Dutton Family (TV Series)
1883 (Streaming TV Paramount +)
The post-Civil war generation of the Dutton family travels to Texas, and joins a wagon train undertaking the arduous journey west to Oregon, before settling in Montana to establish what would eventually become the Yellowstone Ranch.
1923 (Streaming TV Paramount +)
The series follows a generation of the Dutton family in 1923, during a time of various hardships including Prohibition, drought, and the early stages of the Great Depression, which affected Montana long before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
Yellowstone (Streaming TV Paramount +)
The Dutton family, owners of the largest ranch in Montana, the Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, commonly called "the Yellowstone” is central to this series. The plot revolves around family drama at the ranch and the bordering Broken Rock Indian Reservation, Yellowstone National Park, and developers.
Films by Native American Film Makers
Native American Filmmakers
Native American Films Made by Native American Directors from Oklahoma
15 Native American Movies & TV Shows to Watch and Learn About Indigenous History and Culture
Ken Burns
Ken Burns: All the Films
Ken Burns: The US Civil War
Ken Burns: The West