Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Anyone else notice that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) is pretty similar to the later Fast and Furious movies? You got this pair of criminals who are also close friends doing death defying stunts usually involving some kind of mode of transportation while on the run from supernaturally capable and powerful law enforcement. No? Just me? Okay then.

In all seriousness though, they do belong to the same genre at least. The "Buddy Crime" genre I'll call it; a sort of black hat version of the "Buddy Cop" film. Its a pretty robust genre including arty french films like Godard's early work such as Breathless (1960), Band of Outsiders (1964), Weekend (1967), and more contemporary, and mainstream works such as Thelma and Louise (1991), Badlands (1973) and Bonnie and Clyde (1967). There certainly seemed to be a lot of these in the 60's. Even though Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid wasn't exactly the last of these, the movie does feel a bit like a eulogy for the "Buddy Crime" genre and westerns as a whole. There's a pervasive theme of obsolescence as Butch and Sundance struggle to find a place both geographically and socially where they can thrive as they both know that their death is both near and inevitable. The entire narrative hangs around the fact that both men are hunted, or at the very least believe they are hunted,  by the legendary Leforce and "Lord Baltimore" (a full blooded native tracker). The movie even goes out of its way to seed the theme of obsolescence into the dialogue. Early in the film a character tells them: 

"It's over, don't you get that? Your times is over and you're gonna die bloody, and all you can do is choose where."

Another particularly striking example of the theme being expressed is through the symbol of the bicycle. After Butch and Sundance's gang rob a train the local sheriff tries to get a posse together to go after them, and fails due to lack of interest, but then a salesmen hijacks the gathering of people to start selling bicycles as a new mode of transportation that will make the horse obsolete. Butch is later seen with one while entertaining Sundance's lover Etta Place. Somthing he later discards as he and Sundance decide to run to Bolivia with Etta in tow saying:

"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles." 

This has the interesting effect of building a network of symbols that effectively builds a metaphor. The bicycle is not just overtly a stand in for the future but is also linked to a domestic life as its used in the film to entertain and woo the domestic Etta, And by positioning that as a replacement for the horse, a widely understood symbol for the genre of westerns, the film suggests there is no future in crime or western films. This of course only half true, but, giving the move some credit, we're only half done digging into this network.

The inevitable obsolescence and mortality chasing Butch and Sundance, is half of an equation the other half being how they decide to deal with it. They run. The men are literally trying to escape death by doing precisely the things westerns are most known for: robbing banks, traveling on horseback, shooting foreigners (at least in this film's case the foreigners are also outlaws and not natives defending their families) etc... And they never stop, even at the end of the film when they have accepted that they're going to die, they run out to face the firing squad after filling each others heads with fantasy's of running to Australia. Obviously both men knew they were going to die, but damn it they were going to go out guns blazing.

That's the whole attitude of this film. A damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead approach right into inevitable death. And it's a fun ride the whole time with witty lines, spectacular stunts, and fun characters. You really can't help but get sucked into the film and enjoying it on it's terms. This contrasts interestingly with another favorite western of mine: The Searchers (1956), a movie that, without going too far into it, seemed hell bent on completely destroying the western as a genre by exposing all its gross racism and gratuitous violence. In this way Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid can be read as a response to The Searchers. The latter movie killed the genre and the former eulogizing it. It seems both movies did their respective jobs, the western is dead, but the crime movie lives on, many movies being explicitly inspired by and referential of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Not too much of a review this time cause I had something more interesting to talk about, and my academic instincts took over. Brought me back to my film classes. Well Thursday it's likely to happen again as next up is the infamously controversial, and a favorite of mine: A Clockwork Orange (1971).