Film Review: The Long Riders

Seeing films is really important for me. The beauty of the film as an art form is that it becomes a prolonged meditation on a theme: nature, self reliance, the individual - anything the filmmakers deeply care about. And even things that they might not anticipate. The magic of the confluence of the music and the scenery and the acting and the script. It's a beautiful experience. I had the pleasure of watching The Long Riders at the Castro recently. Here's my review of it, it's themes, and how they relate to my Personal Work. And frankly, it couldn't have come at a better time as I wrestle with my new found identity as one "outside of the Company" and newly reintroduced to my cowboy life. There is hope here, amidst the tragedy.

If Peckinpaw ended the western, Robert Hill didn't get the message. Beautiful casting of real brothers across the board, Long Riders is a nostalgic, romantic, sad, brutal epitaph to the western age, a sense of holy individualism, and the Rebel identity in popular America. The Northern Industry dominates Southern Self-Reliance. Law forces out Free Will. The wealthy Company man over the boot strapped Individualist. And Company over Clan.

The story opens with a bank heist that goes a little shy of what the robbers - the Jesse James/Young gang - hope for. One of the brothers gets a wild hare and tries to scare a clerk into opening the safe. He's too reckless and ends of killing him. As the gang recollects on a riverbank later on, Jesse James tells the man he's done. That kind of behavior won't stand.

A classic picture is soon drawn of an independent, ex-rebel now-western continent of men who did not find satisfaction or meaning in the new Northern American identity of Industry and Corporation (E pluribus Unum) and therefor live outside of it. Outlaws. Closely bonded with their family, taking care of themselves, being self-responsible and self-reliant.

This film is not shy to include the ex-rebel quality of these men. They had fought for the south. They were still fiercely patriotic for it. In a brothel in the third scene, the band begins playing a northern song, and one of our gang grows angry. He goes over to the band and at gunpoint demands a southern anthem. Which is played. (wonderful hearing these authentic period songs by the way. Apparently the music superviser of this film was quite famous, he elicited applause whenever he came up in the credits).

It's a late western, which means it is a tragedy. Like Peckinpaws, their era is ending. They are fighting against the dying of the light. And the dying of their own ability to carry on as wild men.

It's illustrated in two ways: Their life versus the Corporation signified by the Pinkertons (to come) and the North, and by their own emotional desire to connect with their women. Every major character in the gang has a woman whom they care about, and have for some time. David Carradine is in love with a very expensive prostitute with whom he clearly shares a long past. Jesse James has a love that he has postponed for at least ten years and to whom he proposes in a very sweet and touching scene  at the end of Act 1 on her family farm. These men are craving the family life of their own. They are craving the sweetness and softness of the feminine, of the domestic. The director clearly has great sympathy for this idea, but I can't help wonder as I sit in the theater of the influence on them isn't too softening (as is often the case, the female connection becomes the Achilles' heel of the otherwise invincible romantic hero. Is it just me?).

But there is something interesting in the scene between Jesse and his love. He says quite honestly, with wonderful integrity (the acting here is superb) that he's not going to change who he is or the way he lives for her, or by marrying her. He is who he is.

This underline is important. At least in intent, he is not planning on compromising this rebel quality, or his outlaw vocation. The pole of the morality of the film. Even as he enters into matrimony, he intends to keep his self reliance, self-direction, self-authority, self-responsibility.

This is particularly touching to me, frankly, having come out of a marriage not so long ago wherein I really sacrificed those elements in order to be as much a part of the relationship as possible. All of those things seemed sacrifice-able to be part of the "corporation" of the relationship - the "third body" that is talked about in marriage. And with relationships. A third person is created between the two. It didn't go well for me.

They do get married, and the other men make their efforts towards domestic partnerships as well. Theres a wonderful sweet seventies romance to the scenes, Vaseline may well have been used on the lenses. And it works. It takes us to the wistful place of album covers from that era. Places that Lana Del Rey dreams of.

Obviously the Pinkertons become stronger. The James's start knocking down trains as well as banks and the ire of the Industrial State is aroused. The metonym of the railroad is beautiful. The rail road: like a piercing bullet into the previously wild and unapproachable west. The only people who could reach the West before was by their own muscles, their own intelligence and planning, their sacrifice, their intense struggle. Once the rail road went in, the strength of the many, of the Corporation, could clear the swath for the meek, those that follow.

Major themes: The North stands for Industry, and really Corporation (E Pluribus Unum). The Pinkertons are the Company of the North that through their innovation are amassing huge caches of money and hiring help to fight off the Outlaws. The South (and by proxy the West) stand for independence. Clannishnes. Taking care of one's self. Writing one's own rules. The North stands for dependence on the head, dependence on the superior man who is not you. Depending on the company. The South/West stand for being self reliant. Self directed. Clear in ones desires. Accepting the compromises. Accepting responsibility for all that happens to you.

The plot continues on, the loves become stronger, the antagonists become stronger. And for a while they even give up outlawing and are forced into hiding by the force of the Pinkertons. The tragedy of the movie comes late, when after all the struggles and the attacks by the Pinkertons, and the gang being almost subconsciously unable to shake their Wild natures, plan a distant northern town - Wisconson? - where a great load is being kept in a bank. When they reach the town and reach the bank, they learn that the safe has been programmed with a clock (industry's advancing technology) and that "the whole town is ready for them" that the Pinkertons have prepared everyone. A bloodbath ensues as the James gang tries to escape with their lives.

The town themselves had become peopled with agents of the Pinkertons, not directly, not because they were hired as the earlier ones were, but by the sheer pressure of the corporate force, the desire to be protected by a large clean idea like industry, like oneness, like E pluribus Unum, even though it is the Pinkertons that make all the money. The meek are in a way protected by this in a way that the James gang wouldn't protect. It's a new era of progress and safety and civility. For those living in the town, it's obvious who the good guys are and who the bad ones are.

The James gang protected their own. They stood for Clannishness. One's family and those closest to you. The town was protected by a sense of being - what - owned? lifted up? by the industrial - by that which was above them.

You can sense me driving this point home. This is very much how I felt at a corporation - even a startup corporation. The startup was in some ways worse, and I'll explain why. There I was, a cowboy who had been on the range for ten years, working every which way, scrapping and making my own path, as best I could. I entered the Company as a skilled lead who had the experience and the maturity to be able to lead. I was given health insurance, a transit card, a paycheck with social security taken out of it, stock options, and a 401k. Suddenly I was wrapped up in the fold of the Pinkerton's protection. How was this different? maybe because it was a startup it almost felt like a James gang - we were "disrupting education" and compared to a Microsoft or any other larger company, it was scrappy. But was it clannish? Did it actually take care of it's own?

The problem with the Pinkerton Corporation model is that the whole is worth more than the individual. The good of the many (or the Corporation itself) outweighs the good of the few (the workers). At any time a decision can be made that defends the Corporation but betrays the Workers. This is obvious. "We're a company, we're doing business."

And that's where the sense of tragedy exists in a way. Certainly for me. I seemed to be protected, I thought I was, I felt like I was secure. I was staff. I was senior staff. I was one of the clan - protect your own, I was part of that fabric.

Being part of a layoff is a complex thing. There are many decisions that are made and they are important for those making them. But for the individual, there is an identity crisis that occurs. "I was protected, now I am not. I was important, now I am not. I was indispensable, now I am not. I had a family, now I do not. I had a Clan, now I am clan-less."

The beauty really of the James Gang moral pole is that whether you are alive or dead, thriving or struggling, alone or in a group, you always have your Clan, and you always have your Individuality. Those are the two highest goods. Those are the two things you fight to protect. Those are the values you defend and those are the things that cannot be taken away from you. Not by Pinkertons, not by Lincoln, not by anyone. They may not be recognized by the Corporation, but that really doesn't matter. Recognition by the corporation is not the high value.

This has been an opportunity for me, honestly, to reconnect with my rebel nature, my wild west outlaw personality that values the individual, values self-reliance, self-authority. I've been thankful for it for that reason.

It's also proving an opportunity to define my Clan. Those in my family, those my old friends, those my collaborators, my new and old ones. When I left that campus for the last time, I walked away from a huge number of talented, funny, intelligent, caring people who I was worried I would be disconnected from forever - whom I would loose because the Company had decided I was now "Outside of the Clan". I've decided to take this time to identify my Clan, those that I met at the Company, those who are individuals too, those whom I value. Because ultimately those people, those "allies", those of my Tribe or Clan, cannot be taken away by a Pinkerton law, by a company's decision. The bravery is now in my lap, to claim my Clan, to choose my collaborators, without the approval of the Company.

I think as I continue this quest into Personal work, and I ask whether I would work at a corporation again, I have to ask if I would be able to keep my sense of Clan and my sense of Individuality when I walked in those gates. Even in the charming, seductive, "wild west" nature of these startups. It perhaps goes double into the question of Romantic Love and whether it is a "softener" or a "strengthener" as it ties bonds of Clan. Individuals who have chosen each other. To remain self-reliant within the relationship? To remain self-validated within the Corporation? The Long Riders has given me the opportunity to really meditate on these problems. These questions.

In The Long Riders, The Corporation, ultimately, is anti-thetical to the Individual. Anti-thetical to self-reliance, self-authority, self-direction, self-validation, self-awareness, self-responsibility. Where does this Rebel Spirit live if it has been suffocated in modern post-industrial civilization and occupation?