Year Of The Western! #29 Keoma (1976)

I know I have talked a lot about the original Django and how it compares to other films on this list and I have had the pleasant experience of seeing Franco Nero in more light hearted comedic westerns, but I haven't had a chance to see Nero in another serious film. I am glad that the last spaghetti western on this list is a serious Franco Nero one.

Film #29 Keoma (1976)

Here is the imdb.com cast listing. Here is the wikipedia page about the production. 

This film starts off with Keoma (Franco Nero), a half-indian/caucasian ex-Union soldier, returning to his home town to see that the things are not the way he left them. A rich businessman named Caldwell, bought the nearby mine and has slowly taken over the town. The mine started polluting the local water supply and this caused a plague to breakout among most of the townspeople. Seeing some of Caldwell's men taking a wagon of infected people to the mine, including a very pregnant woman named Liza, Keoma frees her and takes her into town in order to get medical treatment. 

Keoma soons finds out that his three half brothers are working with Caldwell in running the town. Through a series of flashbacks it is revealed that due to Keoma's half-breed status, his brothers hated him and made his life hell. His father, William (William Berger, last seen as Banjo in Sabata), loves all of his sons equally but the other three think that he loves Keoma more, which is why they punish him.

Keoma could just leave the town to its misery and just drift across the land, as his brothers point out that he comes and goes as he pleases, but he decides that he is going to help the town, punish Caldwell, and hopefully in the process, find his reason for existence. 

Oh, and there is an old lady, referred to as The Witch in the casting notes, who may or may not have supernatural powers. And the sound track tells the story of the film as it goes on.

Reading up on the film after watching it, it is appears that this was one of the last major spaghetti western productions out of Italy. Its a shame because I feel like they were getting stranger and more interesting as they went along. I am glad that if this was to be one of the last ones that it went with a more serious and surreal tone as opposed to the more outrageous buddy comedy kinds that were more prevalent in the later half of the sub-genre's life cycle. 

Keoma feels like it took at a look at what came before it, and not just with other italian westerns because it clearly has some of The Wild Bunch in its DNA, and tried to bring some of the best qualities forward. I am not saying it is entirely successful, but it is evident it had a large bag of tricks and techniques to pull from. There are Leone style flashbacks with some good long tracking shots, Peckinpaugh style slow motion violence, and Corbucci's quick action cuts. Its a good blend of what makes those other films work really well.

I appreciate that Keoma wants to do some good but he isn't sure why. He doesn't really want to face off against his brothers but he will if that means helping the townspeople and Liza. I believe Keoma is trying to atone for his actions during the war because he wasn't sure why he was fighting in it to begin with. Below is a wonderful scene between Keoma and his father discussing war, love, and life. Check out that camera movement. 

I also liked the idea that a number of the townspeople were suffering from a plague as it brought a little different element to the story. It could be seen as a metaphor for how the town let the rich man take over and take their lives from them slowly, like the disease is doing to them as well. They don't know how to deal with it so they would rather suffer in silence than try to fight back. It also brought a bit of body horror to the film and that made the whole situation seem more desperate.

The look of the town itself felt like it was out of a nightmare. None of the buildings were in good repair and most were in the slow collapsing decay that you see in a ghost town. This is a place that had better days and will never see them again. It looks as diseased and worn down as its people. 

Franco Nero was really good as Keoma. He carried a haunted look through almost every scene. You got that he really felt like he belonged nowhere but he was going to try and fight the good fight. When the pregnant lady asked him why he saved her, he tells here 'Everyone has the right to be born.' You have a right to get to here, but you shouldn't expect anything else to be handed to you. He was just trying to give her child the same opportunity he was looking for: to figure out his purpose. 

There is a point later in the film when someone very important to him is taken away and in slow motion you see Nero break free from his captors and run with pure shock and rage towards the person who did the taking. It is an epic moment for the worst reasons and Nero commits so fully to it that you feel his rage as well. 

I forgot to mention another character in the film, George, played by Woody Strode. I want to speak about him for a moment because this isn't the first film on the list he has been in. He was in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as John Wayne's sidekick and he was also one of the three gunmen at the train station that were waiting for Charles Bronson in Once Upon a Time in the West. Here he has his biggest role in the films I have seen and I glad I got to see more of him. George was an associate/worker for Keoma's father and you can see in the flashbacks he always had a smile on his face as he played his banjo, taught Keoma how to shoot a bow and arrow, and just took care of homestead. There is a legitimate warmth to him in those brief scenes. When the film begins, he is a broken down alcoholic with no bow and just three strings left on his banjo. He has been made a free man due to the war but people still treat him the same. His freedom didn't change people's attitudes and now he just drinks to deal with it. When finally given a purpose, to help Keoma fight back, George starts to perk up, even enjoying the shootout at the end saying he feels alive again. Strode never plays stupid or into any kind of stereotype. He is very sympathetic and when he meets his end, he doesn't stop fighting those that kept trying to hold him down. It is a great performance.

I can't say I completely understand the purpose of The Witch. She felt like she belonged more in a Shakespeare play than this film, not with her dialogue but due to her semi-omnipresent ability to be around Keoma and directly question his motivations. It was an interesting touch but I feel that it needed a little more substance or definition in order to have a better impact on the story.

The final showdown with the three brothers and Keoma is haunting as it is set against the sounds of Liza giving birth. There are moments where it is just her screams of pain while you see the brothers trying to stalk Keoma through dry rot in the shape of a barn. As lives are taken, a new life is closer to coming into this world. It shows the pain and cost involved in just surviving, just living.

I also have to say that I equally love and hate the music in Keoma. The instrumental parts are very cool and have some synth notes that are very mid to late 70's that I really dig. The vocal portions are challenging. Mainly there is a female voice that comes in at various points in the film and sings about what is actually going on in the story (this also feels oddly Shakespeare like, or more specifically a Greek chorus), and she is fine but the lyrics don't always fit the pace of the music. Also, she sings in a high warbly pitch that works sometimes but other times is grating. Then, every so often, there is a low gravely voice man that sings as well. He is just terrible. When they sing in tandem, it is... odd. I appreciate taking the chance, and I love the idea of an ongoing song within the film (Jeremiah Johnson kind of does the same thing to a much better effect), especially a western as they already have a different texture to them than other genres, but man I wish they would have chosen different vocalists or something.

Keoma is a interesting movie with some great characters, wonderful camera work, and some awesome shootouts and fights. That it struggles with the nature of one's place in the world and the cost of freedom takes what could have been a simple tale of taking back a town and makes it something more.

If this was the last of the Spaghetti Westerns, then it was a very good one to go out on. 

Western Checklist (nowhere near official or scientific):

• Weird gang member names? All the brothers had the last name Shannon, but that's not that weird.
• Beautiful landscapes? A few lowland hills that I have seen in other Italian films that are pretty but this film was purposefully ugly. 
• Any terrified horses? Yeah, it looks like two get shot back to back. 
• How many Ernest Borgnines? Woody Strode would get the nod here. He is great.
• Any buildings catch on fire? No, but a stiff wind would have knocked most of them over. Seriously, that town looked wrong.
• Does it have a theme song with the name of the film in the title? Yes, kind of. Like I said before, there is a running song through the film about the story. Here is a little bit of it below. You will see what I mean about the actual signing.

Rating:

I am going to give this film four out of five tin stars. Franco Nero is awesome as a man that has no place in the world but is still trying to fight for it. The desperation of the town and the sickness of its people give this film a slight horror edge that I was not expecting but appreciated. The music might be the reason why this doesn't rate higher for me and that's a shame. In spite of that, Keoma is still a really good film and it's worth the time to watch.