Enmity and violence
Some time ago, critics claimed that the genre of the western had died, and one should not dig a corpse for the sake of momentary profit. They, as always, were mistaken. The patient simply was in a coma, and now gives clear signs of life. Remake of "The Magnificent Seven" by Antoine Fukua and "The Hateful Eight" by Quentin Tarantino - these are only the loudest of the prime-ministers of recent times. The number of westerns is growing along with their quality, and international film festivals do not disdain to take them into their open arms. "Hostiles" Scott Cooper lit up in Toronto and Rome, and at the just opened Berlinale showed an ironic western "Damsel" with Robert Pattinson and Mia Vasikovskaya.
In the main role in the "Hostiles" starred Christian Bale, the same one who, together with Christopher Nolan, revived the "Batman", and along with the genre of kinomics that was bent before that.
The director and screenwriter of the film, Scott Cooper, was always interested in real American heroes without embellishments, shabby, beaten life, prostrate with illusions, but not lost the inner core. Such is the captain of the US Army Joseph Bloker (Christian Bale), who all his life fought with the Indians and hated them with all his heart. Now he has to escort the Cheyenon leader and his entire family from New Mexico prison to Montana, so that the deadly leader can rest in the land of his ancestors. The path lies through the boundless prairies inhabited by the militant and cruel Indians of the Comanche tribe and all sorts of criminals who do not put human life in anything. The detachment stumbles upon a burnt farm and finds Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) distraught from grief, in which the Comanche in the eyes killed the whole family, including the newborn son. I had to take her with me.
The path of the Bloker is strewn with corpses and is abundantly poured by blood, but duty obliges to fulfill the order at all costs, and therefore it will be necessary to unite with its enemy, having finally reviewed its attitude to life.
Scott Cooper is far from the romanticization of the frontier, where comic characters in stylish jeans and stylish cowboy hats stylishly shoot out five hundred hundred coltas, under the root of mowing out evil savages, preventing white settlers from building a new peaceful life. It is also far from postmodern flirting with history, when white and African-American anti-heroes confront the same white and African-American scoundrels, and there is no mention of the genocide of the indigenous population. He also does not feel reflexion about innocently murdered Indians, as is customary in the conditions of the victorious tolerance. In this respect, the film is close to the classic Westerns of John Ford. We see the same wild places, dust, mud, hardened souls, the cruelty of an alien world and the despair of existence. And along with them, fortitude, strength of spirit and the ability to revive even in the most desperate situation, that is exactly what the genre of westerns and took people for a soul.
The Indians at Cooper are not at all sacrifices. They are bloodthirsty and ruthless. The Cheyenes that Blocker escorts have no illusions about how the Comanche will manage them when they attack the detachment. But they do not doubt that they will attack. But white people are no better. Blocker all his life believed the Indians are savage savages. He does not care whether the leader is in front of him, a woman or a child. For him they are all - poisonous snakes, which must be strangled, until they are bitten. By today's standards, the cruelty of both of them is off scale. Scott Cooper has already been accused of excessive violence. To which he replied that he had softened the scene of the attack on the farm, sparing the spectators, in fact everything was much tougher. The two systems of the worldview of white immigrants and Native Americans do not essentially differ from each other: all around enemies ("Hostile" means "hostility"), kill until they kill you. "The American state, having met its resistance to colonization policy, Indians, directing and supporting any manifestation of intolerance to the alien way of life and way of thinking Cooper's film on violence turned into a system, but this is also a film about the possibility of a person's opposition to the system.
No, we are not talking about the struggle of human rights defenders for the rights of Indians, although there are characters in the film who say that the destruction of the Indians is a wild injustice (a very bold judgment of those times). The fact that a person, remaining within the worldview of his system and not betraying his people can understand and accept a representative of another system that also does not change his worldview. No longer enemies, just enemies. And after the death of one, the other understands that it will be missed.
The path of moral rebirth also lies with Rosalie, desperate and embittered. But at the end of the film, it seems, there will be a light of hope for her and for the nation as a whole. Hatefulness wins over heart, although we understand that this is not for long.
The film is beautifully shot, the landscapes are unusually sensual, the more severe the hardness of human souls looks. Christian Bale, restrained, but boiling inside, personifies real masculinity. He deserves an Oscar nomination, it's a pity that it did not happen. And the role of Rosamund Pike some critics have already called the best in her career. However, the film can be repulsed by excessive cruelty and violence, as well as its timing. The film goes more than two hours, and the action is developing very slowly. This is a tough and gloomy psychological drama in the style of a western, where the nuances of acting are more important than the action itself.
Sorry for my breacking english :)