How The West Was
Won-Again-The Film Adaptation Of Cormac McCarthy’s “All The Pretty Horses” (2000)-A
Review
[When I, we, were kids
in the old 1950s growing up poor black and white television neighborhood we
were always looking for that cowboy angel Adonis that we kept seeing flickering
on the screen. Now we were far from being able to articulate our dreams, too
say cowboy angel Adonis, maybe our hurts too since we were pretty hard scrabble
kids but we kept wondering about the times when serious cowboy angels roamed
the earth, roamed the West chasing bad guys and saving towns, and later
damsels. Mainly we were looking for somebody, some adult who was not relative
or one of the seemingly bland working- class stuffs outside of the old
neighborhood to look up to. Funny that quest lasted far longer than we, I would
have thought which is something that that film under review made me think
about, think about the bad boys, the golden-haired Adonis.
That figure ultimately
had a name, the name Dean Moriarty who went under many aliases mostly usually
Neal Cassady or Cassidy you would see it both ways depending on the scam he was
running. John Carter, Bill Cadger, Reed Wade and a few other names come back
from memory depending on time and place, but he was the real deal back when I
came of age and was looking for the father I never knew, literally. Dean, let’s
use that since a novelist, a “beat” novelist Jack Kerouac used it for his mad
daddy character in a few of his travelogues was born in the West, born of woman
it was said on the Denver and Rio Grande which may tell something about that
wild boy streak we all put up with just to be around the guy, or be around guys
who had been around him later after he fell down, after he was no longer on the
bus as the expression went. Hoboes call it “catching the Westbound” but anyway
you call it still means going under the cold, cold ground. Before your
time.
I met Dean on Larimer
Street in Denver as he was hustling some young woman who looked like a college
student, far from a person you would expect from his demeanor and looks to be
bothered with.
Beyond that she seemed
far too young for him, although I later learned he was only in his late 20s but
already the drugs and booze were showing some early signs of dissipation. He
had been coming out of the Cattlemen’s Hotel which back in the 19th
century was the place where all serious cattle deals were flushed out. Now it
was a place for cheapjack winos, con men, failed at something guys, a few house
hookers and guys on the lam like Dean. But that later. He came out all dressed
in cowboy hat, blonde if dirty hair, dungarees, a well-worn work shirt and
rounded heels cowboy boots of no distinction. So naturally being a naïve
Easterner who cowboy ideas were grafted from television once Dean got the
brush-off from that co-ed I went up to him and asked him if he was a cowboy.
(By the way that so-called brush-off was just that he was to meet her later in
the day after she finished classes, yeah, Dean had his ways with women that is
for sure).
That was how I met Dean.
Here is how he became a friend, although not always a purebred one from his end
that is for sure (“that is for sure” a good expression whenever you mention his
name to me):
Dean said “yep” to the
cowboy question and started giving a whole line of ragtime about how he had
just gotten in from Wyoming (which he had) bringing in a heard of cows and all
that kind of cowboy thin talk. As I kept asking more questions, how it was to
run cattle, ride a horse, sleep in the cold outdoors overnight with just a
bedroll, city-slicker stuff like that he got more pronounced in what his cowboy
career was about. Before long though we were sitting in Larimer Lou’s Bar with
him sucking down whiskies straight-at my expense. (That endless “no dinero” his
constant expression even when he had money meant me, with “poco dinero” paid
and after a while I didn’t even bother to ask him to pay and even if I had no
money I would just put the bite on the next guy with some kale). That went on
for a few hours until he popped up with the idea of “hot-wiring” a car so we
could go up to Boulder to meet a couple of gals he knew there (he had
apparently, at least this was his line, already had his way with that co-ed)
and did I want to come along.
Sure. Dean eyed some
car, a fast one, maybe a souped-up Mustang I am not that good even now on model
identification and within about two seconds he was done. I wondered that night,
maybe still do, how a lonesome trail cowboy knew how to do such an urban kind
of trick. As I recall we went to Boulder, fast, always fast, met the girls, did
our thing with them, and headed back to Denver. I stayed in Dean’s room at the
Cattlemen for a few days, he was in and out like a bird of prey. One afternoon
he said he was heading for California to get some dope, to make a score in Santa
Rosa and be on something like easy street for a while. Did I want to go. Sure. I
had done more than my share of dope at that time so that was no problem but I
was surprised that cowboy angel Dean who had previously given no indication he
was even interested in dope was up to this. Some kind of what would be called
later a drugstore cowboy, things like that.
Some time I will go into
various trips to the coast, up and down the coast, maybe Mexico too although I
still feel I need to be cautious telling those latter tales. There are too many
of them to fit in what is essentially an introduction to a film about modern
day cowboys and cowboy angels. Once we hit Santa Rosa, once we made score and
Dean made some money (remember never shared with me-ever) one night when he,
maybe me too, was high he let out a great big roar of a laugh that his cowboy
angel talk was all bullshit, all an act. The only truthful part was that he was
born on the Denver & Rio Grande by a woman who would abandon him to a
drunken father who put him into an orphanage. He knew nothing about horses, never
ridden one, or any of the other tall tales he had laid on me that first night and
later. What he was and had served various terms in reform school in different states
for stealing cars, “the greatest car driver in the world,” his term and mechanic
too. That was probably closer to the truth, but you never knew with Dean when
he was being straight with you, or blasting your brain.
DVD Review
By Film Critic Sam
Lowell
All The Pretty Horses,
starring Matt Damon, Henry Thomas, Penelope Cruz, directed by Billy Bob
Thornton, based on the novel of the same name by Cormac McCarthy
Unlike another tale, a
coming of age tale if you like, of the modern American West, of the Texas
west, The Last Picture Show, where I read the novel by Larry McMurtry
first then viewed the film I have seen the film under review the adaptation of
Cormac Mc Carthy’s All The Pretty Horses
without having read the novel. But after watching the film I will make it my
business to read the novel which deals with a different aspect of the West, the
cowboy West when ranch life goes south on its main characters and they are left
to fend for themselves. A task which in true Western fashion has them groping
to stay alive, although that was a close thing.
John Grady Cole (hey
that is the way he introduced himself to one and all), played by Matt Damon, was
career-less, cowboy career-less after his grandfather died and his mother
decided to sell the ranch leaving this young cowboy with horses in his blood
with no place to go. No place but to go looking for work south of the Rio
Grande, south of the border down Mexico
way with his longtime fellow cowboy Lacey played by Henry Thomas.
Whatever adventure,
whatever expectations they had about making a living as ranch hands down in
Mexico were disturbed along the way when they met a vagabond Blevens who was
strange to say the least. Along the way
Blevens losed his horse and then finds it again at a ranch. This brings in the
factor of horse-stealing which will drive a lot of the action in the film, and
which is as heinous a crime in modern day Mexico (and Texas too) as in the old
days when horse thieves were strung up in an age when to take a man’s horse was
to take away his livelihood, his means of travel and his manhood. Along the way
because John Grady and Lacey are tarred with the same brush as Blevens they
will see just what that meant. They were able to get work at a huge ranchero
where John Grady got special recognition by the owner for his keen eye for
horse flesh. Along the way as well they wind up because of Bleven’s actions in
custody and eventually in the “you don’t want to go there” penitentiary after a
corrupt Mexican cop wasted the unfortunate Blevens while John Grady and Lacey
watched helplessly. They survive the prison ordeal somehow and Lacey decides to
head home. John Grady decided he had some unfinished business and was staying
to pursue that.
That unfinished business
was as to be expected getting his girlfriend to go back to Texas with him. This
girlfriend Alejandra, played by fetching Penelope Cruz, a firebrand and well
worth taking some grief for was unfortunately for John Grady the daughter of
the ranchero owner and so they were fated to part, fated in part because the
price of getting John Grady and Lacey out of that “you don’t want to go there”
prison was that she would not see him again, certainly would not go away with
him. That was that.
On his way back home across
the border with his horse, Lacey’s and the late Bleven’s in tow as some sort of
symbol of the experiences he had down south of the border he is stopped in
Texas and essentially accused of that same horse-stealing charge. He got out of
trouble once he told his story to a judge and then meandered back to Lacey’s
place with those three damn horses. Yeah, the modern West is a tough dollar for
a cowboy loving man just like in the Old West. See this one for the pretty
horses, pretty scenery and pretty Cruz.
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