Common sense invites us to be cautious when passing judgment on the introduction of what promises to be an extensive film cycle. Even more so when the first episode of ‘Horizon: An American Saga’ does not seem to respond to the epic character indicated by its bombastic title. More than a bombastic portrait of the conquest of the West, the three hours of ‘Chapter 1’ of this Western saga – which will have four parts if Kevin Costner manages to finance them – offer a ground-level look, without aesthetic displays, of the founding imagination of the Yankee nation.
It is, for the moment, about presenting the cast of a choral work, centered on a series of family conflicts, sketches of romances and community projects hit by omnipresent violence. Costner narrates these events in a realistic and expansive way, although the film does not present itself as a docudrama about the Old West – as Kelly Reichardt did in ‘Meek’s Cutoff’ (2010) – nor as a compendium of powerful historical images, in the manner of ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ (2018) by the Coen brothers.
In the end, beyond its discreet artistic stature, this prologue to ‘Horizon’ allows us to glimpse the forceful political dimension of a saga that outlines an America weighed down, from its origin, by sexism, classism and racial violence, a cocktail unfortunate for a nation immersed in a present of polarization and confusion.
To glimpse the harsh reality behind the myths of the western.
The best: the patience with which Costner presents us with the Horizon universe.
Worst: its poor aesthetic vigor.
Data sheet
Address: Kevin Costner Distribution: Kevin Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Jena Malone, Abbey Lee, Michael Rooker Country: USA Year: 2024 Release date: 28-6-2024 Gender: Western Script: Kevin Costner, Jon Baird Duration: 181 min.
Synopsis: A chronicle that delves into the origins of the United States of America, recounting the expansion and settlement throughout the American West during the years before and after the Civil War (1861-1865). It does so by offering the points of view of families, friends and enemies and how it was colonized with blood, sweat and tears.
Manu Yáñez is a journalist and film critic and specializes in auteur cinema, in its broadest sense. As a child, he had the walls of his room decorated with posters of ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ by George Lucas and ‘Howards End’ by James Ivory, while today he decorates his apartment with posters from the Cannes and Venice festivals , which he has attended since 2003. In fact, his passion for chronicling festivals changed his life when, in 2005, he was commissioned to cover the Italian Mostra for the magazine Fotogramas. Since then, he has been able to interview, always for “The First Film Magazine”, myths such as Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Angelina Jolie, Quentin Tarantino and Timotheé Chalamet, among others.
Manu is an Industrial Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, as well as a Master’s degree in Film Studies and a doctorate in Communication from the Pompeu Fabra University. In addition to his reviews, chronicles and interviews for Fotogramas, he publishes in El Cultural, Diari Ara, Otro Cines Europa (writing and hosting the website’s podcast), the New York magazine Film Comment and the Colombian Kinetoscopio, among other media. In 2012, he published the critical anthology ‘The American Gaze: 50 Years of Film Comment’ and has participated in monographs on Claire Denis, Paul Schrader and RW Fassbinder, among others. In addition to writing, he shares his passion for cinema with the students of the Film Analysis subjects at ESCAC, the Higher School of Cinema and Audiovisuals of Catalonia. He is a member of the ACCEC (Catalan Association of Cinematographic Criticism and Writing) and of FIPRESCI (International Federation of the Cinematographic Press), and has been a jury at the Mar del Plata, Linz, Gijón, Sitges and DocsBarcelona festivals, among others.
In the realm of criticism, his gods are Manny Farber, Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kent Jones. His favorite directors, among the living, are Richard Linklater, Terence Davies and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and if he could revive three others they would be Yasujirō Ozu, John Cassavetes and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He is an inveterate culé, he has been in love with Laura since he was six years old, and he is the father of Gala and Pau.
