“Who are you? Who are you… really?”
A most absurd question to be posing at the archetypal “mysterious stranger” of the “Western,” who rides in from infinity and would eventually ride off into infinity; the question becomes even more pointless, if this stranger has the grizzled face and the towering figure of Clint Eastwood.
Clint may not have originated the character of the mysterious stranger: who rides in from the infinite wilderness into a lawless land and sets about righting wrongs and establishing justice; and once when his work is finished, he would ride back into the wilderness from which he came from.
But Clint is the Star\actor the modern audiences most identifies as the embodiment of this archetype; having taken it to the next level with his “Man with no name” act in Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, and later in his own directorial ventures like High Plains Drifter. So when actress, Carrie Snodgress (playing Sarah Wheeler) poses this question (once again) to Clint Eastwood’s “stranger” in the film, Pale Rider(1985), we chuckle.
The absence (or the ambiguity) of a past history and the nature of his present actions is what defines this character. In the film, Clint is once again (and perhaps for the last time) playing a variation of the mysterious, laconic, loner\stranger that made him a pop cultural icon. Clint, who has been called a lot of names as part of embodying this archetype – Joe, Manco, Blondie, Stranger, – is here referred to as the “The Preacher”: Bearded, wearing a tall stovepipe hat with his tightly buttoned frock coat, and a clerical collar, Clint’s preacher arrives in the midst of a group of “Panhandlers”; a community of small-time gold miners in carbon canyon at the end of the California gold rush.
As opposed to Clint’s earlier films to feature this character, the preacher remains anti-violent and anti-Guns right up until two thirds of the film; he is forced to take violent measures in the initial portions as well, but it is never with a gun, he uses hammers and Hickory sticks for the purpose.. Also, still very laconic, he is not cold, amoral or self-centered as he was before. These are minor, but significant tweaks made to the character.
As actor and director, the film finds Clint in top form; by then Clint’s acting style was fully developed, and especially in these kinds of roles, it had been carefully perfected over the course of two decades; that Mount Rushmore face was now grizzled and balding, those hoarse whispers, those long pauses, those squinty eyes, that wry smile; each of them work as significant tools in conveying the essence of this character, or rather this archetype. Nobody knew what was good for Clint Eastwood, the actor, more than Clint himself. He was fully aware of his strengths and weaknesses, and that’s why he truly blossomed as an actor under his own direction. Clint is not called upon to do anything extraordinary or out of the box here as a performer, as opposed to his next (and more) revered Western, Unforgiven(1992), where he completely played against type; he just has to be himself. His natural coolness forms the basis for the character. He has the ability to limit his dialogue and communicate to the audience with minimal body language, and above all, he just needs to exist, merely just be present in a scene to make his presence felt. He has accumulated such a legend by then, especially as a hero of Westerns, that he naturally brings all that backstory and heft to the character.
As a director, he has given a haunting feel to the film as it relates to the Preacher’s mysterious presence. It’s also a nicely contained film, simply darting between the camp and the small town, which always seems deserted and spooky further adding to the mystic feel. Clint is helped immensely by Lennie Niehaus’ wonderful orchestral score that mixes foreboding string arrangements with more bombastic music, especially drums for the climax portions; some themes have been recycled from High Plains Drifter’s eerie theme music. Cinematographer Bruce Surtees, in his last collaboration with Clint, provides some gorgeous visuals of the outdoors, but the interiors looks intentionally underlit. Clint always complained about the old Westerns (like Shane) where the interiors of homesteads seems to have a lot of light, i guess, he deliberately wanted to create a contrast. It also allows to amplify the mysterious quality of his lead character. The film was shot on various locations in Idaho such as the Boulder Mountains and the Sawtooth National Recreation Area as well a few scenes shot at Tuolumne County in California.
Clint also shows his development as a great action director in the beginning and ending action sequences; the climax is particularly well composed, where he takes his time with the action, it develops very slowly and gain momentum, as the preacher stars dispatching one thug after another. The only main issue i had was with the casting of John Russell, who looks like a pale version of Jack Palance or Lee Van Clef; Russell has a history of playing the main villain opposite John Wayne in Rio Bravo(1959), but here he looks rather weak and too old, i wish he had gotten Palance to reprise that role.
I wish the two main female characters were also better developed, they all seem to have been drawn from a “male gaze” and lacks depth. Also, at 116 minutes, the film is a tad too long, there are times when the pace flags, but overall, Clint creates a vivid and exhilarating Western that tells an age-old tale of a stranger helping out the helpless to fight off a gang of thugs, with some interesting tweaks here and there, even as it delivers all the expected western elements: the gunfights, the archetypal hero and the villains; the romance, great outdoors, etc.. Pale Rider does not immediately come up when great Westerns , or even great Clint Eastwood Westerns are discussed, and rightfully so; Unforgiven and The Outlaw Josey Wales are greater Westerns than this, but it is still a damn-good Western, and under the circumstances it was made – in an effort to resurrect the genre itself- it is a most successful one.
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