Word: barbarosa
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Given this, it is surprising how fresh and purely elemental a Western Barbarosa is Director Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. The Devil's Playground) is Australian, so instead of being overwhelmed by the burden of a cinematic and cultural past, he strips away the accumulated layers and gets at the core of Western legend. In this respect Barbarosa's strength and vitality recalls the poignant Westerns of another outsider. Sergio Leone, but without their cutting edge of nastiness...
...first see Karl (Gary Busey) a farm-boy, stumbling across the desert clumsily, trying to escape the wrath of his father-in-law, whose son he accidentally killed. There he meets the legendary figure known as Barbarosa (Willie Nelson), who is himself being pursued by his own Mexican in-laws the Zabala family--because of a long standing, yet obscurely motivated vendetta...
...unlike Karl, Barbarosa assiduously cultivates the enmity with his family; he waits with calm expectancy, almost satisfaction, for each male Zabala to come pursuing him--and they inevitably do--across the vacant plain. Karl witnesses these ritualistic encounters with second generation Zabala men, whose fathers Barbarosa had killed during the past 30 years, during his first meeting with Barbarosa. A gunshot suddenly resounds, and a bullet grazes the unflinching Barbarosa's cheek. Instinctively Barbarosa shoots the young man rushing at him. Afterwards, he gently kisses the face of the dead young man and murmurs in all sincerity. "They're damn...
...Barbarosa does not remain in the region merely to feed the feud, but rather to feed the myth surrounding the feud. In essence he is only a loner and sometime petty robber preying on squalid little settlements in the region, who takes karlas an apprentice of sorts. The sincere bumbling Karl himself becomes entrenched in the Barbarosa legend, as the "baby gringo," a Sancho Panza to Barbarosa's Quixote...
...BARBAROSA IS THUS NOT so much about these two men as about the legend that engulfs them both. Barbarosa, having escaped from the grave of his enemies by playing dead, goes back to the Zabala household. Inside they are already singing songs of his latest exploit, renewing the legend with their soleman incantations to kill him Barbarosa's smile belies his rapt attention, his pleasure at playing the role of mythical phoenix of the desert: in truth he thrives on the menacing proximity of the Zabalas...