An interesting genre-comedy of Wild West gun-slinging incompetence that exposes fundamental structures of human-being stripped-bare of all of its pretenses, and a glimpse of the basis of authentic religious belief.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In a Valley of Violence is an interesting little Western directed by Ti West and starring Ethan Hawke, John Travolta, and James Ransone¹ that, contrary to many of the reviews out there, is well worth watching. Not only because it is an interesting re-imagining of the Western into a kind of anti-Western of refusal, inhibition, or inability—a Reluctant Gunslinger—but also because it's well-acted(particularly Travolta), beautifully shot on 35mm film, and makes an profound statement on the existential structure of human-being, stripped as it is in this film of its pretense.

First, though, it's a risky film. On initial viewing it will probably take until about the 1-hour, 15-minute mark before it becomes obvious what is going on. At that point, the refusal to become what the film is billed as throughout the first two-thirds of the film, finally comes up against the absurdist limits of its genre that it can no longer refuse. It becomes a kind of comedy of genre incompetence² in which the characters are in every moment poor performances of the cinematic representations they are dragged into.

A violation of basic decency is a bridge too far that sets into motion a process of justice that everyone in the town of Denton must eventually confront. Their faithlessness and arbitrariness has provoked in the protagonist his final will for revenge and, one way or another, that revenge is going to be exacted on the town's sinning population, whether they are prepared for it or not.

“You think just cause you got a prick and a pistol you can kill somebody.”

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn't act on every idiotic thought that comes into your mind.”

“I should shoot the both of you right now, but I need all the fucking bullets in this gun for that asshole out there.”

“I can't, I can't shoot 'em.”

“I know there's not a lot of dignity in this, but I have a daughter I'd like to see again, but I don't suppose that I will.”

“I can't do this no more Marshall, it's a lot to take. I didn't know it'd be like this.”

At the absurd limit of the Western genre, the action proceeds through characters that at every moment need to exhaust every possible rationalization and verbalization of their situation before being forced into some kind of action. Whenever there's an escape into talk, it is taken. Nothing that will stop Paul (Hawke) from revenging the execution of his dead dog. It's an almost absurd premise on all sides. Regular towns folk can barely be coaxed into doing anything to defend the interests of their town. Count-downs to 'go on three' result in a sweaty, paralyzed stare, followed by falling in the dirt, cowering, while trying to make a run for it. On the flip side, is the senseless, unreasoned adolescent fury of Gilly (Ransone) who can hardly restrain himself from shooting anyone around him who's aggrieved him in the slightest way: he just needs more bullets to get the job done. And when it all comes down to it, there's nothing the Marshal can do but stand between these two absurd poles of petty justice and nearly arbitrary spite as the last pillar of sanity, stretched to its bare minimum..

And so, in the end, nearly everything is destroyed, and the drunk priest wanders back into the aftermath of all the killing with his almost-empty bottle of whiskey.

“You ought to stick around this town for a while father, we could all use a little saving.”

Consider Alain Badiou, writing in Saint-Paul: on the Origins of Univeralism:

Paul's project is to show that a universal logic of salvation cannot be reconciled with any law, be it one that ties thought to the cosmos, or one that fixes the effects of an exceptional election. It is impossible that the starting point be the Whole, but just as impossible that it be an exception to the Whole. Neither totality nor the sign will do. One must proceed from the event as such, which is a-cosmic and illegal, refusing integration into an totality and signaling nothing. But proceeding from the event delivers no law, no form of mastery, be it that of the wise man or the prophet (p.42).

The lesson of the Apostle Paul is that religion comes into its ownmost being once it has been absolutely secularized. Only once all constructed forms of faith (either in concepts of existence—totality—or in theories of individual behavior—the sign) have been fully destroyed can one look out at the world and see it for what it is. And it is from within that bleak, sober gaze that the most fundamental structures of human existence comes into focus.

The town of Denton, in the Valley of Violence, in this sense, is simply the site for an event that will incorporate a group of people into its gravitational pull whether they have chosen to be a part of it or not: an inescapable valley. What this film attempts to do, by taking the Western genre to the limit of its concept, is to show the most basic movements and motivations of the people who are nevertheless forced to play-out their roles within it. No one is precisely what they think or say that they are and neither are they nothing of it either. Rather, one must come to see Man simply for what he is: for just his 'biology', as Tubby puts it.

All one can do is all that one can do: which is to say, that once caught up in the process of either arbitrary aggression or petty justice on account of the genetic code they were dealt at birth, there's little that one can do, but what they do. Reluctantly, hesitatingly, each man is forced to come to terms with what he is and to take his measure.

Once passed through the Valley of Violence, there's nothing left but Man as what he is³.

Footnotes