Three graves on the river bank mark the western border of the New World. The expansion of the American West in the 19th century followed a pragmatic logic, it was oriented towards natural conditions. This worked until the horizon, which seemed to stretch into infinity and was the ultimate promise of freedom, sank into the blue of the Pacific.
On the east coast, the borders had been hotly contested a good century earlier, with wealthy settler families from Europe claiming their territory. The Mason-Dixie Line between Pennsylvania and Maryland, the northern and southern states, was rammed into the landscape like a ruler.
In the West, however, the white settlers’ claim to power was met with bitter resistance from Native Americans, symbolized in the graves of three surveyors at the beginning of Kevin Costner’s western epic “Horizon”. A few years later, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, the eponymous settlement was built at this point on the Mexican border – as an outpost of civilization, so to speak.
The people carry purchase contracts for the land that does not belong to them, but they serve the European land speculators merely as cannon fodder for their plans of conquest. The Apaches are not interested in the paper anyway. One night, a renegade group led by the vengeful Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe) attacks the town and burns it down. The settler Frances Kittredge (Sienna Miller) and her daughter Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail) as well as the young Russell (Etienne Kellici) are the only ones to survive the massacre.
Costner plays a former gunslinger
With “Horizon”, which in the original has the unmistakable addition “An American Saga” in the title, Kevin Costner wants to explain the origins of the United States of America in a very fundamental way. He has budgeted his major project to consist of four films, the first two of which will be shot one after the other and will be released in cinemas this year. Not even the pioneers William Wellman, John Ford or Howard Hawks imagined the most classic of all American film genres to be so epic, but “Horizon” already indicates in whose company Costner would like to see himself in the history books.
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Costner has always been a vain artist, at his concerts, where he played the down-to-earth heartland rocker There used to be scenes from his films running in the background. The fact that he is both producer (with his own venture capital) and lead actor in “Horizon” underlines how serious he is – even if he doesn’t appear until well over an hour into the first “chapter”, as the individual films are called.
Costner plays the horse dealer and former gunslinger Hayes Ellison, who takes on the powerful Sykes clan in the wilderness of Montana. He saves the young Marigold (Abbey Lee) from her sadistic son Caleb (Jamie Campbell Bower) and kills him in a duel – which in turn puts his brother Junior (Jon Beavers) on the trail of the two.
At Camp Gallant, cavalry lieutenant Gephardt (Sam Worthington) cautiously expresses understanding for the anger of the indigenous people, while he already has his eye on the beautiful widow Kittredge. Further east on the Santa Fe Trail, a group of settlers led by Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson) is surrounded by a group of Apaches. And the orphan Russell joins the bounty hunter Tracker (Jeff Fahey), who collects the scalps of the enemy tribes.
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“Horizon” tries to establish all of these storylines in its western panorama with a lot of narrative effort, without the archetypes becoming characters. Serial storytelling may work in the cinema with well-known material, but even if many people still see this America as a success story, Costner cannot find a structure to captivate the audience with its founding myth.
Costner on horseback, with an impressive landscape in the background, is no longer enough of an attraction more than 30 years after “Dances with Wolves.” Perhaps he should have taken a few tips from Taylor Sheridan, author and showrunner of the neo-western soap “Yellowstone,” in which Costner recently experienced his second spring as a series star.
There has been a lot of speculation about Costner’s departure from “Yellowstone”; it was said to be due to content-related differences with Sheridan. With his long-term project “Horizon” he now has the opportunity to tell his own personal version of the American project. One problem with “Yellowstone” for the conservative liberal Costner has always been that the series found great fans among Trump voters.
At the Democratic Party convention these days, it is easy to see how traditional American values are being taken over by liberal America. “Horizon” is conservative cinema, which in the first 180 minutes tells American history as a story of violence. The question remains as to what kind of hero Kevin Costner would like to see himself as in this.