Word: mccrae
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ranchers out around Hays, Kans., who, like 40 million other Americans, watched the television epic Lonesome Dove, figured that the great Texas- Montana cattle drive came right over their broad land. If that fantasy were turned into fact, then in all probability the tough old trail bosses Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call drove their herd across the Smoky Hill and Saline rivers and pushed north to beat the merciless winters they knew were in store for them...
...usually pass for "epics" along Broadcast Row. Larry McMurtry's fat novel has been brought to TV -- by writer Bill Wittliff and director Simon Wincer -- with sweep, intelligence and sheer storytelling drive. Firmly anchoring the film is Robert Duvall's moving performance as the wry, philosophical ex-lawman Augustus McCrae. Tommy Lee Jones provides stern counterpoint as McCrae's partner, Woodrow F. Call. Dozens of finely etched characters surround them: a roguish ex-Ranger turned gambler (Robert Urich); a prostitute looking for escape (Diane Lane); a wimpy sheriff (Chris Cooper) searching for his runaway wife; and a lost love (Anjelica...
...mode of westerns like The Wild Bunch, Lonesome Dove notes the passing of an era. "Durn people makin' towns everywhere," says McCrae. "It's our fault too. We chased out the Indians . . . hung all the good bandits . . . killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with." But Lonesome Dove is surprisingly nonrevisionist in its picture of the West. The good guys still perform stunning heroics with six- shooters, and Indians are faceless villains who whoop when they ride. Yet in its everyday details -- the dust and the spit, the casual conversations about whoring, the pain...
There are scenes of harrowing violence and terrible brutality, made more shocking by their matter-of-fact presentation. A hanging on the trail is so swift and morally disturbing that the unsuspecting viewer is left breathless. Suffusing it all is McCrae's stoic resignation in the face of misfortune. "Yesterday's gone; we can't get it back," he tells a man grieving over three murdered bodies. "You go on with your diggin', and I'll tidy up the dead." In its terse prairie poetry, Lonesome Dove celebrates not just the old West but also the men who could witness...
McMurtry also knows a thing or two about ambivalence. Though far from Freud's Vienna, McCrae and Call intuitively understand the meaning of Civilization and Its Discontents: "Me and you done our work too well. We killed off most of the people that made this country interesting to begin with," says McCrae. Call silently disagrees: "Nobody in their right mind would want the Indians back, or the bandits either. Whether Gus had ever been in his right mind was an open question...