Word: barbarosa
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Dates: during 1982-1982
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...BARBAROSA FRED SCHEPISES NEW FILM, is a wonderfully subtle and sly exploration of the two basic elements that have always defined the great westerns, land scrape and legend. The vast desert expanses dwarf the figures riding across them, and likewise, the big myths of the West have always swallowed up the real actions of those figures Unfortunately, in recent Westerns both elements have been undermined. The legends have been pulled out of glorious iconic two-dimensionality and reduced to human levels, and the landscape have been deflated from three-dimensional grandeur into a series of all-too-familiar picture postcard...
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...
...spring of Barbarosa's plot is an endless battle between the outlaw and a Mexican family he married into decades ago. There is a blood feud in The Challenge, too, as bloody as it is feudal. Two swords have been in an old Japanese family for six centuries. Now, in modern Kyoto, two brothers fight to the death for possession of those swords. Life, it would seem, is cheap in the mystic East, at least when an Occidental director like John Frankenheimer invades Japan to make a martial-arts movie. Glenn and Mifune invade the industrial fortress of Mifune...