Barbarosa
Amazing-looking, decently-acted Western with a horse-pucky script.
Barbarosa (1982). Grade: C-
Actually, we could grade aspects of this muddle a bit separately. An A for scenery, B for Willie Nelson, C for Gary Busey, D for the story, and F for the script… with the direction getting a ???
This was Australian director Fred Schepisi’s first American film; I keep meaning to watch his Australian films, because Schepisi is one of the most visually amazing directors I’ve ever seen. But then I’ll catch another incredibly frustrating later movie of his, and veer off his stuff again.
I really, really love Roxanne and Six Degrees of Separation. I like Iceman and The Russia House. A Cry in the Dark and Mr. Baseball both look great, and have good aspects to them, yet they’re wobbly. His other stuff drives me bonkers. I can generally see what the intention was, and I see why it was appealing to try, but those movies are just all over the place.
After being annoyed by this one, I watched the DVD interview with Schepisi, just to find out where it was shot — which was Big Bend National Park, in Texas. In that interview, Schepisi says that American editor Don Zimmerman took a while to get used to Schepisi’s style of shooting; he rarely used “coverage” (doing the exact same scene from a different camera angle, to have more options in the editing room). That when Schepisi shoots a film, he knows what shot he wants, what camera angles he wants. There’s no need to shoot the scene any other way.
That’s not a terrible approach for a fairly low-budget filmmaker, it can make the shooting go more quickly. And when Schepisi’s visual sense is at his best, the images are as good as anybody’s. There’s an ambush here, where our two good-guy outlaws are surprised at gunpoint by some bad-guy outlaws. Their rifles enter the widescreen frame from all sides. It’s just one quick shot, yet it’s masterfully framed. Spielberg couldn’t do any better.
When Schepisi’s visual sense is muddled, though, so is the result. And an editor has precious little they can do to make sense of the jumble. There are moments in Barbarosa — way too many of them — where it’s unclear what’s exactly supposed to be going on. Or what’s going on seems clear, yet makes absolutely no logical sense. Those bad scenes might be the script’s fault. Yet Schepisi chose this script.
It’s written by William D. Wittliff, and he has one decent idea. That the legend of unkillable, prankish, deadly Barbarosa is bigger than the actual outlaw himself. Barbarosa has to try and live up to the embellished stories told about him. In the movie’s best moment, Barbarosa (Willie Nelson) and his young sidekick (Gary Busey) have just pulled off some derring-do, and they’re on a hillside listening to Mexican villagers sing about their exploits. About 25% of the song gets the story somewhat wrong, and the song’s brand new! No doubt as it travels around, it’ll become even more of a tall tale.
The plot’s just a hopeless mess, though. It’s mixed up with some sort of Honor and Revenge and Bravery bullhonky that feels derived from a zillion other sources. There’s maybe some Jim Thompson, and some Larry McMurtry, and Nelson’s own songs (and Wittliff wrote/would write film adaptations of all these things… plus a Sebastian Junger adaptation, which is very much of the same mold).
The Western is just a goofy genre, anyways. There’s many Westerns I like, and some I love. Yet the central myths inherent to Western stories/books/movies are really pretty silly. If there’s a movie about people living in rural 1800s America and trying to eke out a living as farmers (like Sweet Land or The New Land), we don’t call it a Western. A Western has to have Shootouts and Cowboys and Outlaws and such. It’s gotta have men yearning to live without any rules or any responsibilities to tie them down. (The very greatest Western, the series Deadwood, was about how we need to have rules and responsibilities in order to make societies function… so that show probably wouldn’t we considered a proper Western.)
I’ll just point out a few plot elements in Barbarosa, so you can see what I mean. Barbarosa has a Mexican wife he adores, and visits several times a year, when he can (her family has a vengeance grudge against him), and gives her whatever he’s gotten from outlaw stickups. But he doesn’t want to hang around forever, since that would mean being “tied down.” He’d rather ride around robbing people and sleeping outdoors and eating armadillos. Seems damn dumb to me.
We eventually learn that he’s planning on retiring from the outlaw life and moving with her to Colorado. In the end, this doesn’t happen, and Barbarosa regrets that it’ll never be possible… but also wistfully remembers all the fun he’s had. BUT WHAT ABOUT YOUR WIFE, BARBAROSA? The one you promised to rescue from her family’s clutches and retire to Colorado with? Has that worked out as wistful fun for her?
There’s another bit where Barbarosa teaches his new sidekick how to shoot a pistol; stand still and aim carefully. How there’s nothing that’ll scare your opponent as much as you looking calm when you’re in danger. Near the end, we see the sidekick put this into practice… and this noob, who barely knew how to hold a gun a few weeks ago, manages to outshoot a guy with a dang hunting rifle. Wouldn’t that guy be better at shooting? Not in the manly world of showing No Fear, I guess.
And at one point, a tough character, faced by a young wannabe tough who’s got him in his rifle sights, merely taunts the young guy down. Tells him “you don’t have the guts to shoot me,” and the young guy doesn’t. That makes sense — he’s not a killer at heart, right? Except a few minutes later he sneaks up on the older tough guy and stabs him. So, the young guy is a killer, just not with a rifle? What? WHAAAAAT?
There’s some redeemable bits in here. Nelson’s a perfectly good actor, and I believed in his performance (just not the character). There’s a nice touch where, whenever the head baddie who’s out to get Barbarosa tells of all the ways Barbarosa’s pissed him off, the kids within earshot whisper his name in awe. The baddie’s making them like Barbarosa more! And the baddie himself is great hammy big acting by longtime screen idol Gilbert Roland, age 75 or so; it would be his last role. He’s menacing and mean on crutches (although this might be stolen from one of the baddies in Once Upon a Time in the West). Jake Busey is fine. Isela Vega is lovely as the wife, if anyone could get Barbarosa to settle down, it would be her.
Really huge Western fans might enjoy this, and it frequently looks amazing; hats off to cinematographer Ian Baker (who shot all Schepisi’s other elegant-looking movies, too). I found the most amusing moment to be in the DVD interview. Schepisi talked about shooting in Big Bend National Park, and how the one hotel didn’t have a TV; this really bothered the American crew, who were all bored. Schepisi says it wouldn’t have bothered an Australian crew at all; “we’d have just brought a ping-pong table.” So the Outback is actually more resilient than the Wild West? I believe it.