1972: Junior Bonner

Junior Bonner (1972, Peckinpah) 6/10

"I'm working on my first million. You're still working on 8 seconds" (Curley Bonner)

Prescott, Arizona is dying. Once enveloped in its classic western traditions and iconography, this small rural outpost is slipping into modernity. Railroad stations once linking the town to the outside world are passed over by freight traffic; the desert ranches that once filled the outskirts of town are now torn down to make way for the development of mobile homes. Stripped of its identity, the community and its vitality are vanishing into the sands of time.

It is the Fourth of July weekend and the community is gearing up for its annual rodeo, the centerpiece of its "Frontier Days." High school marching bands and ornate fllotillas compete for space amongst antique cars, stray dogs and lost causes on the town's sloped main street. Yet, this cause for celebration is muted for aging, nomadic rider Junior Bonner (Steve McQueen). Returning to his home town, Bonner is attempting to mend his pride and his family.

Utilizing Sam Peckinpah's familiar thematic interests in masculinity, aging and the extinction of the West, Junior Bonner demonstrates the director's ability to engage in topics that particularly illuminate his protagonists' desire for a final attempt at fulfilling their potential. In the case of Junior Bonner, Peckinpah creates a dichotomy between father and son, as each try to re-establish their masculine pride and soothe old wounds.

The spectre of the past haunts Junior Bonner. Skillfully demonstrated in a series of black and white flashbacks, Junior Bonner is chased by the painful memories of a spasmodic fall during a recent contest. Wounded by a ferocious bull owned by wily rancher Buck Roan (Ben Johnson), Bonner finds pain in more than his taped broken ribs. His ego is equally wounded. To eradicate his mental and physical anguish, Bonner bribes Roan to ensure that he and only he will be selected to ride Roan's cattle in the bull riding portion of the local competition.

Splitting the prize money fifty-fifty with Roan means little to Junior Bonner. Unlike his devious brother Curley (Joe Don Baker), money is not the world to Junior Bonner. His attitudes are a dying breed: belonging to a world in which self-respect and familial selflessness is more important than materialism. Antithetical to this are Curley's selfish attitudes. Taking advantage of his father's alcoholism and financial disarray, Curley purchases his father's 600 acre ranch for half of its $30,000 value. Bulldozing it to the ground, Curley plans to use the land for quick personal financial gain:building a giant mobile home park amongst the quarries of stone, gravel and bric-a-brac.

Curley speaks in the rhetoric of a unifier. He talks of consolidating the family, providing Junior with a job and his mother with domestic security. Yet, his actions are derisory: the stuff of a showman. Unlike his father or brother, his brand of entertainment is self-serving. Peckinpah cunningly illustrates this by demonstrating the divergent public reactions to the establishment of the rodeo and Curley's mobile home park.

Other than a few curious children, there is hardly anybody in town who appears excited over the erection of this annual event. Their eager eyes have instead moved over to Curley's mobile home park. Adorned in a carnivalesque atmosphere, Curley's park is feted by vast crowds, who are inquisitive of his modern contraptions and lured by free hot dogs and hard candies. Thus, Curley's dream of harmonizing his family are contrary to his actions. Rather than aid his father, he sends him packing onto the street. His equally myopic wife disapproves of her children going to the rodeo, despite the fact it offers an opportunity for the family to gather for one last time.

Following in his father's footsteps, Junior is a small-time celebrity on the rodeo circuit, who like his father Ace (Robert Preston) is seeing the extinction of his kind. Now descending into alcoholism, Ace is a forgotten figure in his own hometown. Separated from his wife Elvira (Ida Lupino), Ace dreams of emigrating to Australia to engage in another vacuous get-rich-quick scheme. Elvira on the other hand has resorted to renting out her small house to boarders, while Curley plans to sell the home and whisk his mother away into one of his isolated metal units.

While Curley paves the way for the future by destroying his father's delipidated home for other families, he is unable to mend his own. An interesting facet of Peckinpah's film is that old wounds are not neatly healed by film's end. Elvira refuses to re-unite with her inconsiderate husband, Ace appears unwilling-despite his talk-to change into an emotionally mature men and Junior is not inclined towards settling into the rigid lifestyle his brother plans to offer him. Each appear to be going their separate ways as does Bonner's bland love interest Charmagne (Barbara Leigh) by film's end.

The west may be dying for Junior Bonner, but he still clings to its values. His happiness is not found in selling plots of land, but in wandering along desert highways and performing at equally retrograde venues. By focusing less on the rodeo itself and Bonner's desire for personal redemption, Peckinpah crafts a wonderfully small and intimate modern western not at odds with his visually flamboyant and expressive style. Utilizing a wide range of zoom shots, split-screens and slow-motion techniques, Peckinpah establishes a style that complements rather than alienates a setting that places an emphasis on time.

McQueen's low-key performance is suitably grand for the material. Like Ida Lupino, McQueen nurtures a performance rooted in earthiness enhanced by a twangy accent and a famliarity with rolled cigarettes. Ben Johnson grins admirably, while Robert Preston is astutely dank, dirty and jovial. Joe Don Baker tries a little too much to be a southern Richard Burton, while Barbara Leigh is forgettable and superfluous. Peckinpah creates a cryptically desolate paradigm: a distinctly American sub-culture knowingly on the verge of death.

While regional historical societies have preserved Prescott, Arizona and other outpost communities from complete extinction, the characters and settings astutely encapsulated in Junior Bonner belong to a bygone era. The dynamic of detachment between modernity and the past is wonderfully dissected throughout the film: grafting the push and pull between the frayed fences of the historic rodeo and the empty tactics of Curley's real estate showman. Fittingly, Peckinpah concludes the present is unwilling to find a purpose for these people and their ways: resulting in their additional fractured separations and subsequent diaspora further into the American cultural wilderness.

* Junior Bonner is available on MGM Home Video

Other Peckinpah Films Reviewed:
Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid (1973) 8/10

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque

1973: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973, Peckinpah) 8/10

"This country's getting old and I aim to get old with it. Now, the Kid don't want it that way. He might be a better man for it. I ain't judging. But I don't want you explaining nothin' to me. And I don't want you saying nothin' about the Kid and nobody else in my goddamn county."- Pat Garrett (James Coburn)

A leisurely paced final western from legendary director Sam Peckinpah about ideas of individual identity, the maintenance of one's own system of values, the evolution of the West and the process of aging and maturity, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a bleak examination of the bonds of friendship and the ties that break them.Pat Garrett (James Coburn) a former outlaw turned sheriff has been assigned the duty of capturing his friend and ex-collegue Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson).

Whilst Garrett may now don fancy attire, live in a white picket fence home and enjoy the respect of the New Mexican business elite; he is in actuality torn and bitter inside. While the Kid is despised for his murderous thievery by the giant corporate cattle ranchers such as Chisum, he is envied by his former mentor Garrett who admires his sense of ideals and hopes to give Billy more time by continually avoiding to capture the man.

Instead Garrett pursues his own psychological journey meeting with former allies under the notion of finding Billy the Kid. Through this one gets the sense of Garrett trying to confront past elements, whilst being unable to relate or tackle the real problems that currently plague him such as his detached relationship with his wife and his inability to come to terms with his newfound respectability and consequential responsibilities.All the while, Billy continues to expand his mass popular support and gain new supporters such as his fidgety knife-wielding sidekick Alias (Bob Dylan). It is this type of power that Garrett envies as he is reduced to displaying his power through force and intimidation. No longer respected by his peers, family or the community, Garrett has become a puppet of the corporate state and has to decide between his loyalty to his friends or his employers.

In many ways this film is like Peckinpah's earlier masterpiece The Wild Bunch in its detailed account of two former allies now foes battling once another. Like The Wild Bunch's Deke Thornton, Garrett is now the employee of the artifice of the state; whilst Billy like William Holden's Pike is an organic rival to the ideas of state. Unlike The Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid tackles subjects such as aging more directly as two different values systems come to the forefront: Kid's vision of an open individualistic state versus the ideals of Chisum and the corporate state that attacks those who rebel against it.

Similar elements of companionship and brotherhood are explored, but at a much more visceral and personal level.This is assisted by Coburn's ultimately cool performance as Garrett, in which he is able to convey over time a maturing Garrett through the changes in his personality and his aging complexion. Similarly Kristofferson is able to offer a bubbly playfulness to contrast Garrett's seriousness. Dylan appears miscast and doesn't really add anything to the picture, while the stellar supporting line-up of western veterans such as Jason Robards, Katy Jurado and Slim Pickens rounds out the fine cast.

Peckinpah's lyrical gunplay and editing come to the forefront in the 2005 "Special Edition Cut" made by Peckinpah scholars based upon Peckinpah's writings and the supposed aesthetical intentions of the late director. Certainly, while this isn't a director's cut it does add something new to the process and provides something less extensive than the '88 Preview Version, which may be more in line with Peckinpah's vision. Ultimately, this is a splendidly bleak and grimy Western that tramples on the last remnants of the Western mythology with cold calculated precision and flair. It is at least a minor classic of American cinema and Westerns in general, rather than a fully fledged flawless work.

* Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is released through Warner Home Video as part of the Sam Peckinpah: The Legendary Westerns Collection

Other Peckinpah Films Reviewed:
Junior Bonner (1972) 6/10

Copyright 2006 8 ½ Cinematheque.