Favorite Westerns?

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by octagon

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is pretty iffy but No Country for Old Men strikes me as very much a western.

First off, it is not a crime drama. The central theme is change; Tommy Lee Jones is a character out of his time, who feels his time is passing; civilization is in conflict with lawlessness - these are all classic western themes and the undeveloped, underpopulated border setting isn't just a 'pretty picture' backdrop, it's very much a character in the film.

The civilization/lawlessness conflict is particularly interesting. Think about the evolution of westerns...first we get your basic 'taming of the west' Cowboys and Indians stories. Then the fight to bring pockets of law and order to the lawless fronteir. The comes civilization and conflicts between mining interests and cattlemen and ranchers and whatnot. And then finally civilization choking out the last vestiges of the frontier lifestyles. That last one was a pretty common theme in modern westerns and civilization was almost always at least in part the bad guy.

NCFOM kind of takes that last step and turns it on its head - it's really the same basic conflict between order and chaos but civilization is the good guy, the 'old way' worth preserving.

There's a lot more there than a simple crime drama.

I would say in a sense that it is a modern western but I guess not in the traditional form. I would have no problem with it being on a list, although I would not personally include it on a Western list of mine.