“time and space” in a way that predicts today’s Internet. And it takes its potshots at extreme capitalism.
Thursday, July 04, 2013
"The Lone Ranger": "tons of fun" with trains and 19th Century technology
In depression-era San Francisco, with the half-built Golden
Gate Bridge in the distance, a boy visits with Tonto at a local carnival. Tonto, a very made-up Johnny Depp, tells the
story of “The Lone Ranger”, where a bookish, self-righteous county prosecutor John Reid (Armie Hammer) in the old West
turned into a force for vigilante and homemade justice.
Gore Verbinski has
made an imaginative and fantastic western adventure, monetizing Nineteenth Century technology to
its ultimate, particularly around trains and railroads.
The story starts in Texas (the countryside looks more like
Shiprock in New Mexico) and move up into Utah for the closing of the first
transcontinental railroad, which generates the climactic sequence of the movie.
There are two enormous train wrecks. The first home happens with an attempted
robbery, as the train runs to the end of the tracks, and the locomotive
scuttles sideways across the desert. In
the ensuring coplications, Reid is kidnapped and left for dead, but found by
Tonto. Reid quickly returns to health
and becomes the western legend. The
second wreck occurs in a complicated
layout around a mine, after a trestle has been blown, with the train falling
into the river, with an effect much like in “The Cassandra Crossing”.
There’s a curious scene where a boy plays with an electric train,
before electricity would have been widely available. The model railroad scene contributes to the
metaphor in the story.
Armie Hammer (26), in his appearance, makes the most
possible of young male virility. There is always a soft edge to his somewhat
intellectual personality as he becomes the famous character. In a bizarre scene in a native American camp
at midpoint (and the sacking of native Americans is another theme in the movie)
Tonto opens him up, in order brand or tattoo a little bit of his super hairy
chest.
The movie is also a parable about “progress”, as railroads
were seen as a way of mastering
“time and space” in a way that predicts today’s Internet. And it takes its potshots at extreme capitalism.
“time and space” in a way that predicts today’s Internet. And it takes its potshots at extreme capitalism.
The official site (Japan) from Walt Disney, Jerry
Bruckheimer Films and Touchstone Pictures is here.
The film seemed not to be available in 3-D. I saw it in Extended Digital (almost Imax) at the AMC Courthouse late lastnight. Oddly, the show the first night (Wednesday July 3) did not
quite sell out. The localization of sound is as detailed as I have ever heard in a theater.
The music score, while borrowing from Rossini’s “William
Tell” overture, is by Hans Zimmer, and often uses a curious slow waltz
rhythm. The ending credits present music
like a late romantic symphonic slow movement, ending quietly on a dominant
chord.
Picture: from Roadside America, PA, 2011.
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