Emily Blunt travels to North America (she should have departed from Liverpool but made the mistake of travelling from Southampton) on a revenge mission and finds that pretty much everyone she meets is a killer or thief - luckily, not native American Chaske Spencer. Blick finds dark humour in brutal times. It's 1890 - everything looks so primitive. I mean, films had been invented by then.
Most of the cast don't survive long. Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Hughes, Stephen Rea, Rafe Spall,
Well photographed by Arnau Valls Colomer in widescreen, good music from Federico Jusid, edited by Ben Yeates and Andy Morrison. Six 50 minute episodes for BBC. Blunt is an exec producer.
Talk about reinventing the western! This is an epic original story with lots of fabulous backstory about Native American Indians - not just their ill-treatment, and racism, but the fact they were at war with each other. When we finally learn about her revenge mission, involving Tom Hughes and Rafe Spall (a brilliant performance), it's devastating. Beautiful writing of the doomed relationship between her and Spencer, beautiful coda in 1903 England.
Probably the non-feature film highlight of the year.
Only tough women need apply.
From The Guardian: "An even greater pleasure is that, simply and touchingly, Blick has written a love story, affecting for being doomed. “I’m so glad you said that,” says Blick when I put this to him. “It is a love story isn’t it? Let’s not forget that. Woody Allen wrote to me saying, ‘Good luck with your horse opera’ which I thought was funny. But he’s right. It is an opera, a place of heightened emotions in a mythic space. That’s what the best westerns have always been.” Leaving us with the question, how does Blick know Woody Allen?
It was shot in Spain. “We shot all the time in the afternoons to get that slanting light of the golden hour. I learned that from Clint Eastwood.” What a name dropper!
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