This movie is part-time Buddhist?
This movie?
The movie that opens with shots of sadistic, barbaric children gleefully torturing scorpions and ants via flaming twigs?
The movie that, before you’ve even had time to unwrap your box of Red Vines, presents you with a shootout in which a temperance union full of little old ladies who just happen to be “in the wrong place at the wrong time” is slowly, chaotically slaughtered to bits?
The movie featuring a bank robber who, upon being fatally wounded, coldly mutters “Well how’d you like to kiss my sister’s black cat’s ass?” before promptly discharging his shotgun into a couple more citizens, just for the hell of it, prior to expiring because hey, if you’re gonna go down, you might as well take a few other pricks with you?
The movie that, in the final shoot-out to end all final shoot-outs, depicts one of its “heroes” hastily seizing a nearby woman and deploying her as a human bullet shield, another one of its “heroes” pumping lead into another nearby woman after greeting her with the sobriquet “Bitch!,” and virtually all of its “heroes” mowing down an entire Mexican village with an indiscriminately-aimed machine gun? This movie?
Context, my friends. Context.
Yeah, all right, so The Wild Bunch is a little violent. But like Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner, sometimes I wonder if The Wild Bunch is famous for all the wrong reasons. To me, calling The Wild Bunch a movie about violence is sort of like calling the New Testament a book about a carpenter getting a couple of nails hammered through his palms.
I get it, though. During my first proper viewing of the film, I didn’t really pay much attention to, shall we say, the nuances of the plot. I’m fairly certain that my main thought was, “You know, for a 30-year-old movie, this kicks a lot of ass!” Now here was a Western I could really sink my teeth into – even if most of the characters within it probably couldn’t do the same. Being 17 at the time, and going through my “I wanna watch all the ‘classic’ movies” phase, the only two facts I knew about The Wild Bunch prior to viewing it were that it was a western, and that it was violent. Therefore, upon examination, I agreed that both of these things were true, and I didn’t exactly dig any deeper – and in my family, at least, I know I wasn’t alone.
About five years prior, my older brother had been going through his “I wanna watch all the ‘classic’ movies” phase, and naturally, like any self-respecting patriarch who’d come of age in the late ‘60s would, hoping to pass along this sacred rite of cinematic passage to his children, my father brought home a certain action-packed western from the video store. Roughly 12-year-old me, who was decidedly not going through such a phase quite yet, sort of hovered around the fringes, not quite watching it, and not necessarily ignoring it either.
I know what you’re thinking: “Let me guess, at that tender young age, he couldn’t handle the graphic carnage.” Actually, I feel asleep about 90 minutes in. Not that I was bored. It was a really late night! I awoke to the sound of my father yanking the tape out of the VCR, his eyes bugging out, ranting to my brother, “Pretty crazy gunfight at the end, huh??” “Yeah, that was crazy!!” They glanced incredulously at my groggy face. “You don’t even know what happened! You missed the whole thing!” Whatever. Guilty as charged. Probably wasn’t that impressive of a gunfight anyway.
So, five years later, my cinema literacy in full blossom, I rectified my error, and arrived at the same conclusion as my kinsmen had: pretty crazy gunfight, indeed.
But then, roughly five years after that viewing, having chosen, in graduate school, to write a paper on the legacy of “ultraviolence” in late ‘60s and early ‘70s cinema (compelling topic, no?) I dutifully sat down, almost with some reluctance, to watch The Wild Bunch once more, pen in hand, barely recalling much about it aside from endless shots of bullet-ridden banditos flying backwards in slow motion, and, well, a funny thing happened.
I found the experience surprisingly … moving.
The Wild Bunch … moving? Wasn’t that like finding Debbie Does Dallas moving? Was I suffering from some serious psychological issues?
Possibly, yes – but not because of my reaction to The Wild Bunch.
*****
In my experience, reviews and summaries of The Wild Bunch invariably describe it in two distinct ways: 1) as a film that’s brutally violent; 2) as a film about “the death of the old west” (whatever the hell that means). For instance, here’s an excerpt from Lucia Bozzola’s All Movie Guide review:
“Beginning and ending with two of the bloodiest battles in screen history, Sam Peckinpah’s classic revisionist Western ruthlessly takes apart the myths of the West. Released in the late ’60s discord over Vietnam … The Wild Bunch polarized critics and audiences over its ferocious bloodshed. One side hailed it as a classic appropriately pitched to the violence and nihilism of the times, while the other reviled it as depraved … Sam Peckinpah presents a relentlessly pessimistic view of frontier life in 1913 as it gives way to modernity; any sense of honor is strictly relative, and ‘civilization’ means venal businessmen and mercenaries.”
And here’s a snippet from this old movie guide published in 1995 I still have lying around called Rating the Movies: “Peckinpah’s theme about the civilizing of the old west at the expense of rugged individualism is here a bitter one…”
After presumably having been hidden in a drawer for 50 years, Roger Ebert’s original 1969 review of The Wild Bunch has finally popped up on his website, and I find it astonishing how little space within it he devotes to the plot, the themes, or even the characters’ names (note, for instance, how he only refers to William Holden instead of “Pike”). Rather, he spends the majority of the review rationalizing why audience members who “enjoy” the film’s violence most likely aren’t sick in the head, mainly by concluding that the film’s gore is such an over-the-top “shooting gallery” that it becomes kind of fun:
I suppose The Wild Bunch is the most violent movie ever made. Hundreds of men, women and horses are slaughtered. A man is dragged behind a horse. Throats are slit, broken, strangled. Blood flows in an unending stream. Thanks to recent advances in special effects, the blood actually spurts when somebody gets shot; there are geysers of blood everywhere. A friend of mine describes The Wild Bunch as being 200 simultaneous blood transfusions with no recipients.
So how could I possibly enjoy this bloodbath? Because it was no more real than the dozens of gunfights I have already survived, in the company of Rex Allen, Hopalong Cassidy and John Wayne … The hundreds of victims in The Wild Bunch are not characters but actors — stunt men, extras, stand-ins. They have no identity. Their function, for the most part, is to appear on the screen, be shot and die … The deaths in The Wild Bunch, I now believe, are no more real than the deaths suffered by those villains of the late 1940s who used to clap their hands to their shoulders and holler “aaargh.”
It was like if an alien had suddenly landed, and then delivered a brilliant philosophical treatise. No one would have heard a single word the alien said, because HOLY FUCK DID YOU SEE THAT ALIEN?
To be fair, upon its initial release, Warner Brothers chose to cut out several flashback sequences in order to shorten the film’s running time and thus bring in more ticket revenue (while, amusingly enough, leaving all the violent bits fully intact), which I suspect would have skewed the tone a little. However, upon the release of the director’s cut 25 years later, with a little hindsight under his belt and some key flashbacks reinserted, Ebert echoed the same themes as most other reviewers have:
The message here is not subtle, but then Sam Peckinpah was not a subtle director, preferring bold images to small points. It is that the mantle of violence is passing from the old professionals like Pike and his bunch, who operate according to a code, into the hands of a new generation that learns to kill more impersonally, as a game, or with machines.
Personally, whenever I hear about this so-called “death of the West” theme that is supposedly prevalent in every greatest Western flick ever made, I swear I detect a faint snoring sound in my head. “And then civilization came and destroyed the old West.” Like I’m not supposed to prefer civilization? The old west sounds like a dirty, filthy hellhole if you ask me. Half the pioneers probably came down with diphtheria or dysentery or all those other diseases I learned about while playing The Oregon Trail. “And then the stoic individualist was forced to give way to the educated businessman.” I dunno, all those stoic individualists were probably jerks, right?
There has also been discussion of a third kind, centered around The Wild Bunch’s technical and stylistic innovations: action scenes driven by an entirely new pace of cutting, shots of bodies (from multiple angles) tumbling in slow motion while being unexpectedly interlaced with contrasting images, enough squibs to fill a Heinz factory, etc. But The Wild Bunch doesn’t stir my soul and rattle my bones because it’s “violent,” or because it depicts “the death of the Old West” or because it “reinvented the lingua franca of action cinema.” When push comes to shove, I wouldn’t say that The Wild Bunch is ultimately, at its fetid, sweaty, blood-stained core, a movie about any of those things.
To me, The Wild Bunch is a movie about redemption.
*****
Just what kind of a director are we dealing with here anyway? To capture the full scope of Sam Peckinpah’s psychologically intricate personality would require an essay even lengthier than this one, so perhaps a few quick anecdotes from David Weddle’s If They Move … Kill ‘Em! The Life and Times of Sam Peckinpah, stemming from the set of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, will have to do:
“We started watching the first night’s dailies and the shit’s out of focus,” says Gordon Dawson. “Sam says, ‘Can’t I expect fucking focus?’ And the second shot was out of focus, and the third shot was out of focus. Sam got so mad he took out a folding chair and he stood up, he almost fell off it because it was gonna fold, and he took his cock out and he pissed on the screen with this big S. And he walked out of the fucking room.”
“Bob Dylan and I were sitting in the screening room when he did that,” Kris Kristofferson recalls. “I remember Bob turning and looking at me with the most perfect reaction, you know: what the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”
“From then on,” says Dawson, “every night we watched dailies with this S-shaped piss stain on the screen.”
Not sure how this sort of behavior would go down today?
He began every day with a big tumbler of vodka to stop the shakes and get himself upright, dressed, and out the door. Most days he arrived a half-hour to forty-five minutes late on the set; the crew rarely completed the first shot before ten a.m., and often not before eleven. “Every morning on the set, Sam would start off with a great big tall glass of grenadine and water,” says James Coburn. “As the days wore on it would get redder and redder and redder, until it was almost pure grenadine. And then it would start getting lighter and lighter and lighter again because he had started mixing it with vodka, or gin. He was a totally indiscriminate drinker. What it did for him, I guess, was close out all of the shit going on around him, all problems and chaos, so he could just focus on the scene.”
In the late morning he reached a state of alcoholic equilibrium, appeared sober, and worked with clarity until mid-afternoon, when he began slurring his words and swaying on his feet.
“After about four hours, Sam was gone,” says Coburn. “He was a genius for about four hours, then it was all downhill … He didn’t want to shoot sometimes. He’d be sitting there in the trailer waiting for them to light a scene and they’d call him to the set and he wouldn’t come out of the fucking trailer. We’d all be sitting around waiting for him, and I’d have to go into the fucking trailer and say, “Sam, what’s happening? Why don’t we go shoot this fucking scene? What’s the matter?” He’d say, almost in a whisper, “I don’t know, I don’t know what I’m doing – ” I’d say, “That’s bullshit!” And he’d finally go out there and – boom! – plug right into it. It was like a writer not wanting to sit down and face the typewriter.”
Sounds like me trying to write my blog posts.
*****
I suspect that each of my “favorite movies” essays will take on its own distinct flavor, and unfold via its own distinct methodology. In other words, I don’t suspect most of them will read almost as a linear plot summary like this one will. Hell, if all you want is a plot summary of The Wild Bunch, you can just head over to Wikipedia (or some less reputable site of your choosing).
But given that the last thing anyone discusses when they discuss this film is the plot, I figure the best way for me to go about this particular entry would be to make the storyline, and hence the film’s ideas, a little clearer. You know how it is. Perhaps you haven’t seen The Wild Bunch in 30 years, perhaps you’ve never seen the film at all, and there’s probably even a few of you out there who are convinced that “Warren Oates” is the ‘80s blue-eyed soul duo who sang Top 40 gems such as “Kiss on My List,” “Private Eyes,” and “Maneater.” Let’s relive the magic together.
Once upon a time, three bandits roamed the West: Pike Bishop, Deke Thornton, and Freddie Sykes. But we’re not exactly talking the three wise men of Bethlehem here. One day, while the younger, handsomer Pike and Thornton are savoring the spoils of their latest heist with a pair of, shall we say, ladies of the night (it’s never been clear to me if Sykes is in their orbit at this juncture or not), there’s a knock on the door.
“Relax, it’s just some champagne we ordered,” Pike declares with the confidence of a stockbroker on September 3, 1929. However, that’s when the Law comes busting in. Wily ol’ Pike manages to jump out the window, but Thornton, apparently lacking that special sixth sense, winds up in handcuffs – and in prison.
Fast-forward several years.
Craven railroad man Harrington has decided he’s had enough of Pike and his crew randomly feasting on his business empire at will. So, he lets Thornton out of prison, but only on one condition: to lead a team of bounty hunters to capture Pike and pals – dead or alive. (Couldn’t it have been for, like, a back rub or something? Why does it always have to be hunting down your best friend?) In other words, it’s a task that Thornton doesn’t seem terribly jazzed about, but hey, better than prison, right?
And so, when a much more seasoned Pike rides into a Texas border town to rob a promising little railroad depot, his crew now consists of the equally seasoned Dutch Engstrom, young hot-shot brothers Lyle and Tector Gorch, a proud, idealistic Mexican fellow named Angel, and some other gang member who swiftly gets shot in the face, so I doubt there’s one single viewer who even remembers what his name is. Let’s call their plan to sneak into town dressed as U.S. Army soldiers both tactically clever and drenched in revisionist Western irony, but there’s just one problem: the robbery is a set-up by Harrington.
Foiled!
Pike, Dutch, and company barely manage to blast their way out of the place alive, taking down several of the aforementioned little old temperance ladies in the melee, and when they ride back to the rendezvous spot, where old geezer Sykes is waiting with another batch of horses, they cut open the sacks they stole.
“Silver rings,” the not-terribly-bright Tector Gorch proclaims with what might be called an unintentionally comical hint of awe.
“Silver rings, your butt!” Dutch curses. “Them’s washers!” A series of cutaways shows that one member of the Bunch at least – Sykes – finds the situation awash in humor.
Lyle, not the sharpest washer in the shed either, begins to put two-and-two together: “We shot our way outta that town for a dollar’s worth of steel holes!”
Pike mutters, through the clenched teeth of a man who has definitely seen more successful robberies in his day, “They set it up.”
“They?!” Lyle shouts. “Who in the hell is ‘they’?!”
Sykes, apparently having waited for this moment his entire scruffy existence, loudly and eagerly mocks the others: “Caught ya, didn’t they? Tied a tin can to your tail! Led you in and waltzed you out again. Oh my, what a bunch! Big tough ones, eh? Here you are with a handful of holes, a thumb up your ass … and a big grin to pass the time of day with!” His impressively tobacco-stained mouth (props to Edmund O’Brien for capturing that certain dental verisimilitude) froths with disdain. “’Theyyyy.’ Who the hell is … ‘theyyyyy’?”
“Railroad men,” Pike grunts. No response from Sykes. “Bounty hunters,” Pike adds. Crickets. Dramatic pause. “Deke Thornton.”
The glee immediately disappears from Sykes’ face, as if he’s a six-year-old who’s just been informed that Santa Claus is not, in fact, real. “Deke Thornton?” he states with quiet incredulity.
Yes, Freddie Sykes. The Deke Thornton.
But there’ll be plenty of time to meditate on that later, for in the heat of the moment, Angel cracks an ill-timed joke about letting the Gorch brothers take his worthless “share,” guns are drawn, Pike tersely scolds his bickering children, and cooler heads prevail. But Lyle, still coming to terms with the situation, turns to Pike: “All your fancy planning and talking damn near got us shot to pieces over a few lousy bags of washers. While this was gonna be me and Tector’s last job ‘fore we quit and headed south. We spent all our time and money a’gettin’ ready for this!”
Pike replies, “You spent all your time and money running whores in Hondo while I spent my stake setting it up!” Tector’s Cheshire Cat grin would appear to confirm Pike’s assessment. After Lyle tosses Pike a washer, the leader of the Bunch turns it in his hand, chucks it into the dirt, and bemoans, “Hell I should have been running whores instead of stealing army horses.”
“While you was doin’ all that plannin’,” Lyle helpfully explains, his anger apparently having morphed into pride, “me and Tector was getting’ our bell rope pulled by two – two, mind you – Hondo whores!”
“And Pike was dreamin’ of washers!” Dutch adds between healthy chuckles. And so, the laughter spreads like smallpox, a bottle of booze is passed around, and the camera pulls back to reveal a Bunch dealing with the pain and suffering of the afternoon through the time-honored method of embracing the absurdity of it all.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is our protagonists’ “good” side.
*****
But allow me to cycle back to the whole “bounty hunter/outlaw” dichotomy, if I may. Here’s where I think Peckinpah is supposedly making his slyly revisionist Western commentary on the notion of “good guys” vs. “bad guys.” In theory, the “good guys” are Harrington (the corrupt railroad baron), Deke Thornton (the former bandit who’s only chasing after the Bunch due to the threat of further prison time hanging over his head, and who openly admits that he’d rather be stealing loot and shagging prostitutes with the “cool kids”), and a seedy hodgepodge of wannabe deputies whom Thornton memorably dubs “egg-sucking chicken-stealing gutter trash”. The “bad guys” … are the Bunch. So Peckinpah is encouraging us to root for and sympathize with the “bad guys” instead of the “good guys,” right? Real “subversive” in that patented “late ‘60s New Hollywood” way, is it not?
the telephoto lens
But see, from my humble part-time Buddhist vantage point, none of these guys are truly the “good guys.” At least not yet.
Oh sure, Pike and Dutch may possess an air of worldly wisdom that the Gorch brothers, for example, appear to lack. They huddle by the campfire late at night and wistfully reminisce about making “one good score and [backing] off” and how they’ve “gotta start thinking beyond our guns” and how they “wouldn’t have it any other way” and other touching homespun folderol like that. Thornton, for one, is still nursing a giant man-crush on Pike; when asked by one of his gutter-trash companions, “What kind of a man are we up against?,” Thornton responds, with a gleam in his eye, “The best.” In modern terms, one might say that Pike Bishop and Deke Thornton are having a bromance.
But Pike and Dutch are not men who I especially admire. I suppose they may carry some vague notion of ethics and compassion that others in their “profession” might not bother with, but for the most part, as far as I can tell, they’re morally and psychologically adrift. To use the “It’s a Wonderful Life test,” would the world be a better place if Pike Bishop and Dutch Engstrom had never been born?
Granted, I do not know how brutal and sad their presumably impoverished childhoods were, the details of their families’ socio-economic situations in late 19th-century America, the dearth of suitable employment opportunities that led them to choose a life of crime, etc., and yet I feel confident in decreeing that they chose a path that I personally find rather unethical. They could have settled down and gotten normal jobs like everyone else, but noooo, instead they decided to steal shit that didn’t belong to them, and kill the random losers who got in their way. As far as I’m concerned, in the words of another legendary 1969 cinematic outlaw, they “blew it.”
And yet.
No matter how reprehensible a man’s life’s work, perhaps he can only ignore his misdeeds for so long before the cumulative total eventually begins to gnaw at him. And so Peckinpah devises a maddening little test for our misguided Bunch. What would happen if they ever found themselves caring about someone or something outside their own tried-and-true sphere of personal, material gain? What if they ever had to choose – gasp – between personal, material gain and, say, standing up for a friend? Things would have to get pretty damn ugly in order for them to upend their entire worldview, right? In other words, to quote the storied philosopher Chubby Checker, “How low can you go?”
Wouldn’t it be quite the shocker to learn that Pike, Dutch, and even the Gorch brothers might have consciences after all? The fact that they have not made a positive contribution to society is a fact that they do seem dimly aware of, and which bothers them just a teeny tiny bit. Not enough to do anything about it, of course.
Until they meet Mapache.
*****
The Mexican Revolution. It was that time when Mexico won its independence from Spain, right? No wait, it’s the event that Cinco De Mayo commemorates.
Not that either? What the hell was it then? How come I don’t know squat about the Mexican Revolution? How much do you know about the Mexican Revolution? Considering that Mexico is a country which directly borders the country I grew up in and currently live in, you’d think I would at least know a couple of things about the Mexican revolution, but you would be mistaken. Oh sure, I’ve seen those portraits of Pancho Villa in taquerias here and there, and I think General Pershing was involved at some point for no reason, and hell, I’ve even watched Viva Zapata! starring Marlon Brando – but mostly I just remember Brando chewing the scenery and making a valiant effort to pass as Latino (!).
I’m only half-serious. Long story short: within the span of about four years, the Mexican government was overthrown by about sixteen different generals (Madero, Huerta, Obregon, Carranza – although curiously, neither Villa nor Zapata), and in the end, one has to ask the question, “What, precisely, changed?” But Wild Bunch viewers need not sweat the particulars; all you need to know is that Angel, the Mexican of the Bunch, is a little more invested in the outcome than the others are.
And another question: where exactly did the Bunch … find Angel? Did they win him in a poker game? Did his parents owe the Bunch unpaid rent? No man can say. But when you’re on the run from the Federales, having a bona fide Mexican in your ranks clearly comes in handy, because after the botched robbery, the Bunch do what every desperate, directionless American male has ever done since time immemorial: head to Mexico.
First stop? Angel’s home village, and seriously people, this is the place to be: plentiful shade, pure, untarnished women, mellifluous, acoustic serenading … no wonder Angel feels like fighting to preserve this place.
(Side Note: Apologies to all you Jerry Fielding fans out there, but I almost wonder if Peckinpah should have opted for an indigenous folk music soundtrack over Fielding’s orchestral score, which, despite having garnered one of the film’s two Academy Award nominations, has always seemed to me like it belonged more in a western released in 1949 as opposed to 1969. I’m not asking for “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” here, but I think The Wild Bunch is one of my rare “favorite” films that I enjoy despite its soundtrack, not because of it. In other words, if you’re wondering why this only comes in at #10 on my list regardless of all the love I’m throwing its way, perhaps you should start there – or consider that the mood to watch thousands of bullets entering and exiting human flesh only strikes me every so often.)
Where was I? Ah yes, Angel’s village. When children gather around in a circle in this community, it’s not to torture insects with fire, but to clap along with the local dancers. (Dutch even asks a girl to dance. Politely! In Spanish!) As the camaraderie of the evening wears on, Pike, Dutch, and Skyes chat and chuckle with the old village wise man, a Mexican peasant version of Obi-Wan Kenobi.
But one person in Angel’s village is in no mood to party: Angel, who learns that his father has just been killed by a general named Mapache, and not only that, but his mujer has run off to go galivanting with this very same general and his shiftless army. Naturally, our Gringo protagonists seem bewildered by Angel’s freakout; when Angel asks for the name of the man who shot his beloved parent, Pike kicks him in the behind and barks, “What the hell difference does it make?” Amen brother. Mostly they wish Angel would just go sulk in the corner and cease killing everyone else’s buzz. Pike guffaws as he witnesses a peasant girl beguiling the Gorch brothers with one of those old-fashioned hand-rope tricks: “Now that I find hard to believe.”
“Not so hard,” Mexican Obi-Wan responds. “We all dream of being a child again … even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all.”
Pike leans back thoughtfully. “You know what we are, then.”
Yes, Pike, what you “are” are people who don’t belong in this peaceful Mexican hamlet and need to get your thieving asses out of there. Agua Verde might be more your speed. (Juicy exchange between Thornton and Coffer, played by the one and only Strother Martin: “What’s the closest town of any size?” “Agua Verde.” “What’s in Agua Verde?” “Mexicans. What else?”)
Which brings me, at last, to Mapache. Stand back in amazement when I reveal that the actor playing Mapache, who looks like some STD-infested john that Peckinpah might have found after a quick visit to a Tijuana brothel, is none other than legendary Mexican director Emilio Fernandez.
(Side Note #2: Having sat on my “movies to watch” list for almost two decades now [given that I’ve failed to ever locate a copy], I finally spotted Fernandez’s Maria Candelaria in the DVD section of my local library last year, only to bring it home and discover that this particular copy … featured no subtitles. Still tried to watch the first 30 minutes though. Kind of reminded me of a John Ford movie. Visually, at least. Guess I shouldn’t cross it off my list just yet.)
Fernandez, in the name of art and his noble Mexican people, valiantly sets glamour and pride aside, because as Mapache, he’s practically the embodiment of every anti-immigrant hard-liner’s fear of what all Mexicans are genuinely like. Mapache, as Thornton puts it, is “a killer for Huerta who calls himself a general.”
Where’s my guy?
There’s my guy.
Compared to Angel’s village, which was green and misty and forested and might have even contained a hobbit or two, Agua Verde could more accurately be described as a dry, dusty, barren piss-hole. In Angel’s village, the flower children roamed free, but in Agua Verde, Peckinpah gives the viewer a quick little symbolic shot of children lounging behind a row of bars, and a shot of a woman breastfeeding her baby beneath a strap of bullets (at least she’s resourceful).
What kind of a place is Agua Verde, you ask? Agua Verde is the kind of place where, when Angel impulsively shoots his ex-girlfriend to death, the gathered throng laughs copiously and quickly forgets about it five seconds later. Let me break it down for anyone who’s a little slow with the biblical symbolism here: In this particular corner of Mexico, Angel’s village is heaven, Agua Verde is hell, and Mapache is basically Satan. On a scale from “bad to worse,” with “bad” being a 1 and “worse” being a 10, the Bunch are like a 5.5, the bounty hunters are like an 8, and Mapache is like a 9.3.
So what does the Bunch do? They team up with the bastard.
Yep, they sell their souls to Satan – but given that this “hell” sure looks an awful lot like heaven, who could blame ‘em? Mapache has everything the Bunch could possibly want: cellars featuring rows and rows of wine barrels (just ripe for shooting holes through and fornicating under), steam rooms, an abundance of prostitutes, not to mention protection from Thornton – in short, all the comforts of a powerful regime. Peckinpah even gives Mapache precisely what every great movie villain needs: an irritatingly aristocratic German military sidekick.
And yet, not everyone in the Bunch is eager to climb aboard the Mapache Express. When Tector mentions that he’s low on money, Pike smirks, “With the way the Generalissimo’s cleaned out this part of the country you gonna have a lot to spare.”
For whatever reason, this comment doesn’t sit so well with Dutch: “Generalissimo hell. He’s just another bandit grabbing all he can for himself.”
Pike replies, “Like some others I could mention.”
In other words, pot, meet kettle, but Dutch can’t abide: “We ain’t nothin’ like him. We don’t hang nobody … I hope some day these people here kick him and the rest of that scum like him into their graves.” This he declares, I should point out, while wholeheartedly planning to collaborate with the man. It’s the thought that counts, I guess.
I always get a kick out of Lyle Gorch’s less articulate but equally immediate expression of resentment, when he mutters at the dinner table, as Mapache creeps into the room, “Lookie here … ain’t he the one.” There’s just something fishy about the guy.
But they’ve never been in the business of picking their masters based on fishiness or supposed lack thereof, which is why, while relaxing in the steam room, the rest of the Bunch look at Angel, who almost shot to death the source of their next (and hopefully last) heist job, with faces that essentially say, “What’s your deal buddy?”
“I don’t know why the hell I didn’t let them kill you,” Pike muses.
“Listen, I’m not going to steal guns for that devil to rob and kill my people again.”
“Noble, noble, very noble,” Dutch replies, like the college dorm mate whose offer of ganja has just been rejected by the uptight Christian kid: Fine, be young and stupid, but when you finally grow out of this phase, call me. “One load of guns ain’t gonna stop ‘em raiding villages – heh, why you oughta be thinking about all the money you gonna have.” Precisely.
Pike knows what time it is: “Buy ‘em a ranch, move ‘em a thousand miles.”
But no, Angel has “values” and cares about his “people” and all that lame crap. “Don’t you see this is their land? And no one is going to drive them away.”
“Angel, you’re a pain in the ass,” Pike finally gripes.
“Would you give guns to someone to kill your father or your mother or your brother?”
“$10,000 cuts an awful lot of family ties.” A real “kith and kin” man, that Pike Bishop. But damn it, there’s something about the kid that he likes.
“My people have no guns. But with guns, my people could fight. If I could take guns, I would come with you.”
Dutch suddenly has an idea. “Say, um, how many cases of rifles did Zamorra say was in that shipment?”
“Sixteen.”
Dutch responds to Pike, almost as a dare, “Well … give him one.”
Pike thinks, and thinks, and then thinks some more. “All right. One case, and one case of ammo, but you give up your share of the gold.”
“I will.”
Pike replies, with a suitable mixture of annoyance and admiration, “We know you will.”
That’s good enough for Sykes, who’s had enough of the morality play. “Sure glad we got that settled!”
Oh yeah. It’s real settled all right.
Guys, guys, guys. What are you doing? You’re not actually starting to care about Angel, are you? You better watch yourselves. Start caring about people, and you’re bound to get yourself into trouble.
In an alternate scenario, in which the Bunch don’t want to even sniff the Mexican Revolution, then right about here is where they should drop Angel like a hot potato. But they don’t. Maybe that tiny little ember of morality within their souls isn’t quite dead yet. Perhaps it’s merely flickering at the bottom of a wet, moss-strewn log, waiting for someone like Angel to come along and flip the log over.
Funny thing though: I don’t actually like Angel very much. He’s every idealistic hothead I’ve always wanted to punch in the face. He’s Pasha in Doctor Zhivago before Pasha becomes Strelnikov. He’s Che Guevara without the t-shirt line. Guys like Angel are almost the opposite of part-time Buddhists, because they tend to think that all of life’s problems would be solved if enough guns simply fell into the “right” hands. When Sykes points out, “I didn’t see no tears rolling down your cheek when you rode in from Starbuck,” Angel answers, “Ah, they were not my people. I care about my people, my village – Mexico.” Come on, man. Shouldn’t an individual’s compassion extend to all people?
Don’t get me wrong – I’d pick Angel over Mapache any day – but I don’t find Angel’s spiritual journey particularly moving. Isn’t this the very same “freedom fighter” who murdered his ex-girlfriend in broad daylight despite her stating to his face that she was more “feliz” with Mapache? But I’ll tell you what I do care about. I care about the Bunch caring about Angel. Because somehow, he lights that raging fire out of the dim, smoldering remains of whatever inner empathy they still have left in their cracked, weathered bones.
*****
So: they get the guns, and not just any guns; there’s an extra special prize in the Cracker Jack box they weren’t anticipating.
“Think you can handle that?” Lyle asks Pike.
“What I don’t know about, I sure as hell am gonna learn.” Has the spirit of American enterprise ever been expressed so succinctly?
But while lounging around at their super-secret hideout, the usually sharp-eared crew find themselves unexpectedly surrounded by Angel’s machete-wielding peasant pals.
“My people are here for their guns,” Angel explains proudly to his terrified gringo partners. “They apologize and ask you to forgive them for their lack of trust. But only by caution do they remain alive.” Such gentlemen too. “They are puro Indio, and these mountains belong to them!” (Come on, why do mountains always have to “belong” to somebody?)
As they silently scurry away with the crate that Angel promised them, the Bunch, nominally neutral bystanders in this conflict, seem to dig what these guerillas are about: “They ever get armed, with good leaders,” Pike proclaims, “this whole country’ll go up in smoke.” Not that he’d have anything to do with that.
In a scheme that I’d like to pretend I understand but am not certain that I actually do, the Bunch hide the ammo and deliver the load to Mapache in batches – in order to make sure they get paid? In order to prevent him from simply killing them first and taking the whole shipment? My bandit days are a little behind me. At any rate, Mapache seems to admire men who are just as suspicious of the rest of the human race as he is. The German suddenly pops a question: “I understand you have a machine gun.”
“Our contract called for 16 cases of rifles and ammunition for $10,000, not a machine gun,” Pike points out, his lawyer clearly hiding in the bushes, ready to present the paperwork. Mapache gives Pike the “You can’t really be doing this to me, Gringo” death stare, before Pike adds obsequiously, “That’s our present to the General.” Now, all’s fair in love and banditry, but this always strikes me as a particular low point for our conflicted protagonist. Isn’t he getting a little too old to be serving as some unscrupulous strongman’s little errand boy?
Angel sure ain’t kissing up to Mapache, you can bet that much. When he and Dutch arrive to collect the last two bags of gold, there’s tension in the air so thick they could probably rest their bags of gold on it. One of Mapache’s underlings juggles the sacks in his hands, tosses the first bag to Dutch, and then, after a long, pregnant pause and a reptilian glance in Angel’s direction … tosses the second bag to Dutch. “How many cases did you take from the train?” the underling asks with a deceptively casual air.
“Sixteen cases of rifles,” Dutch explains. “We lost one on the trail.” Yeah. Sure. Sounds plausible enough to me.
In the nicest, clearest English he’s ever spoken, Mapache points his wine glass at Angel and cuts to the chase: “He stole it.”
Well, them’s the breaks. Angel’s attempt to ride out of Agua Verde is not, shall we say, successful, and as the soldiers drag him to the ground, Peckinpah keeps cutting back to Dutch, who doesn’t look too happy about this turn of events, but … what are you gonna do? Angel stares at Dutch with pathetic “help me” eyes, and while Dutch’s eyes seem to return the sympathy, his lips certainly do not. “Well, I’m wasting time here. Adios.”
“Y Angel?”
Nice, tasty pause. Dutch locks eyes with Angel again, then he turns to Mapache. “He’s a thief. You take care of him.”
The gathering of soldiers literally bursts into vaudevillian waves of “Ah ha ha!” laughter that gradually increase in volume as Dutch rides away, but for some reason, Dutch ain’t laughing. On the contrary, Peckinpah cuts to one of those close-ups that, on a certain day, if the weather’s right, can burn a hole through a man’s soul. Dutch didn’t really mean what he said about Angel … did he?
Well, the job’s done, but, funny thing: back at camp, no one seems to be enjoying themselves very much. Now, if you’d asked Pike, Dutch, Lyle, and Tector a month ago how they’d have felt if they’d somehow managed to score $10,000, they probably would have said they’d have felt like screwing a hundred Hondo whores in tandem. But this wasn’t exactly the taste they’d wanted in their mouths.
Lyle half-heartedly chucks a rock at the ground. “Well he had guts.”
“We’re just lucky he didn’t talk,” Pike mutters. Always looking out for #1, that Pike.
“He played his string right out to the end!” Dutch declares to all present. Translation: “It stinks, but he knew what he was getting himself into, so let’s just forget about it!” I mean, what are they supposed to do, rescue the guy?
“How in the hell are we gonna do that?” Lyle pontificates. “They got guns and 200 men.”
“No way,” Pike croaks. “No way at all.”
And besides, Angel is far from their only problem; like Tom Brady after a presumably devastating 4th quarter sack, Thornton and his men continue to inch closer and closer. Spotting Sykes riding along undefended, Thornton’s posse scores a long-distance shot right in the old coot’s thigh, as the rest of the Bunch watch helplessly through binoculars. Supposedly limping to his slow, grueling demise, Sykes senses the presence of a machete near his neck; it’s none other than … one of Angel’s peasant buddies? Is it throat-slashing time? Or perhaps, since Sykes is part of Angel’s crew, does the peasant see the aged bandit as a “friend of the cause?” Hmmmmm …
But the Bunch, not having the benefit of being able to watch The Wild Bunch on repeat like I can, assumes he’s dying, if not dead already. First Angel, now Sykes … the screws are turning tighter and tighter. “Damn that Deke Thornton to hell!” Dutch exclaims.
“What would you do in his place?” Pike growls in his old friend’s defense. “He gave his word.”
“Gave his word to a railroad.”
“It’s his word!”
“That ain’t what counts! It’s who you give it to!”
And the Bunch should know, having given their word to … ah yes, everyone’s favorite warlord. But it’s nice to discover that, when everything’s turning to shit, and you have no one else to yell at, you can always yell at your friends.
What to do … what to do? Turns out gold isn’t worth very much when you loathe yourself and the whole world wants you dead. “I’m tired of being hunted,” Pike bitches – maybe he shouldn’t have become an outlaw? (I hear that barber is a solid, legal profession.) And so, the four remaining members of the Bunch decide they might as well live it up Agua Verde-style (what happens in Agua Verde stays in Agua Verde?). Brilliant plan, except for … oh, right, Angel’s barely breathing carcass being dragged in the dirt by Mapache’s red automobile like tin cans dangling from a newlywed’s bumper. Let’s call it the Peckinpah Challenge: “OK, you guys want to ignore the intense moral and spiritual crisis that’s engulfing every fiber of your being? Fine, go ahead. But I’m not gonna make it easy on you.”
“God I hate to see that,” Pike growls.
“No more than I do,” Dutch confirms.
Surely there’s a convenient way out of this dilemma, a solution that would satisfy all involved? Summoning the deal-making spirit of Henry Clay, Pike makes Mapache an offer: “I want to buy him back … I’ll give you half my share for him.” Half? Is that Peckinpah I hear chortling in the background? Silly Pike, you can’t redeem your soul with half a bag of gold.
And frankly, Mapache doesn’t strike me as the bargaining type. You’ve got to give his hangers-on credit – at least they know how the Bunch rolls: “Why don’t you go get a drink? Enjoy yourself! There are women everywhere!” One officer extends the fingers on his upturned palm, as if he were preparing to pick fruit: “Muchas! Bonitas!”
His Dionysian tendencies never having failed him before, Pike sucks in his breath and snarls, “Why not?” The agonizing sense of betrayal that’s eating away at his conscience? Eh, nothing that a few flasks of liquor and a couple of whores can’t fix.
Except, for possibly the very first time in his existence … it doesn’t work. Crouching there, in that humble Agua Verde bordello, a funny thing happens to our hopeless protagonist. Mulling over the waste that is his own life, staring at the bottle of tequila he has emptied to no avail (as if that bottle contained the answers to all the great riddles of the universe), hardly able to look the Mexican prostitute who he has presumably just shagged in the face, Pike Bishop … has an epiphany.
Now, I’d love to tell you precisely what that epiphany is, but … well, Pike stares at that bottle for a good minute or two, and yet he utters not a word. But here’s my guess: for the first time in his life, he’s finally realized that a philosophy revolving around the concept of “looking out for #1,” while seductive, does not lead a person to happiness. He’s just witnessed Angel sacrifice his own physical well-being for the larger well-being of his people. What has Pike ever sacrificed for anyone?
There’s an arresting moment, earlier in the film, on the way to Angel’s village, where Tector threatens to beat the last few remaining teeth out of Sykes’s mouth, but Pike quickly lays down the law: “We’re gonna stick together, just like it used to be. When you side with a man, you stay with him, and if you can’t do that, you’re like some animal! You’re finished! We’re finished! All of us!”
Just like he and Thornton, back in the good old days. Oh wait a minute, didn’t Pike jump out a window and leave Thornton to rot in jail?
But perhaps there’s something larger at stake than the elusive concept of loyalty to one’s “people.” Perhaps Pike has begun to discover, the hard way, that, to paraphrase Tom Joad, maybe the world isn’t made up of tiny little five-man bunches; maybe the world is made up of one big human bunch. Pike’s had it all wrong. Money, booze, whores – that’s not happiness. Caring for people – that’s happiness. While I couldn’t say for certain, as I wasn’t there in that flea-invested adobe hut with him, I suspect Pike has finally realized that if a man spends his whole life aiming to “protect himself,” as Pike has, then one day he may discover that he doesn’t have much of a self left worth protecting.
All right, but where to go from here? The two choices at his disposal do not seem terribly enticing: 1) Leave Angel to die at the hands of Mapache, while doing absolutely jack squat about it, which would almost turn into kind of a living death, as he would be consumed by unimaginable levels of remorse for the rest of his days and wouldn’t be able to enjoy the sweet flavor of worldly delights without every taste reminding him of his gutless betrayal (not that he has long to live anyway, what with Thornton chasing him and all), or 2) Waltz back in there with guns a-blazing and try to rescue Angel, an almost certainly suicidal act, but one that would prove – to Angel, to Mapache, and to the whole damn world – that Pike Bishop is a man capable of caring about someone, and something, larger than his own chapped hide.
It’s a death either way, so … might as well go for the real thing, right?
Pike hobbles into the next room, approaches the Gorch brothers, and finally delivers the nice, fat, juicy piece of dialogue we’ve all been waiting for:
“Let’s go.”
Looks like Mapache picked the wrong Bunch to fuck with.
*****
I suspect the “myth” surrounding the quaint little skirmish that follows, certainly at the time of the film’s release, but even to this day, is that the Bunch decide to go out in a blaze of glory “just for the hell of it.” In other words, what they do is perform a supreme act of nihilism. Live fast, die young, and leave a good looking corpse behind, right?
You know what I think? Contrary to popular belief, I think that, for perhaps the first time in their lives, the Bunch have actually seen the light. They have had, to quote Jules from Pulp Fiction, “what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity.” In Return of the Jedi terminology, they are Darth Vader watching the Emperor slowly zap their son to his crispy doom, and they’ve finally had their fill of the Dark Side. Mapache doesn’t know it yet, but he’s about to become the recipient of some high-voltage Jedi electro-shock finger beams. Our good-for-nothing bandits have finally sniffed the warm scent of revolution rising up through the air, and you know what they realize they’ve been doing? They’ve been backing the wrong caballo. All right then. It’s time to score some points for the underdog.
Contrast the Bunch’s “moment of clarity” with the suitably tipsy Mapache, who, upon seeing the fearsome foursome determinedly march toward his banquet table, groans a punctuation-free “Losgringosotravez.”
What Mapache doesn’t know, of course, is that the Bunch woke up on the sacrificial-suicidal side of the bed this morning. And what enemy is more dangerous than an enemy with nothing to lose?
“We want Angel,” Pike barks.
“You want Angel?” Not exactly one to back down from a challenge, Mapache promptly slits Angel’s throat. Pike promptly shoots Mapache in the chest.
Whoa. Hold on. Stop the presses.
You’re not supposed to do that. You’re never supposed to do that. And yet, with one confident pull of the trigger, the Bunch have firmly broken “Action Movie Rule #38”: killing the bad guy even though they’re outnumbered 100 to 1. Mapache’s army doesn’t even fire back yet. They’re too shocked. Are they supposed to be fighting? Are they still even … an army? Does the sun still set in the West and rise in the East?
And thus we come to the Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru’s “Favorite Movie Pause #52.” The camera swirls around as it captures the befuddled facial expressions of the paralyzed soldiers, as if Peckinpah is giving the Bunch a moment to back out. “You really sure about this?” But then Dutch breaks the quiet with giddy laughter. Oh yeah. It’s time to rock and roll. Like the proverbial kid in a candy store with a $20 bill, they don’t have the faintest idea who to shoot next. Who looks good? Yeah … the German guy. Always good to shoot the German guy.
I like to pretend that one of Peckinpah’s friends, in an evening of alcohol-fueled overconfidence, threw down a daunting dare: “Sam, I challenge you to film the roughest, bloodiest, nastiest, funniest, most absurd gunfight that anybody’s ever seen.” Sam leaned back, cocked his hat, and declared, “You’re on.”
Seriously though. Peckinpah must have sat down in the fall of 1968, watched every gunfight in every western movie that had ever been made up to that point, and thought to himself, “… I can beat that.” What do you want? A machine gun with a seemingly bottomless supply of bullets? Check. Boxes of exploding dynamite? Check. Grenades? Check. Tables flipping over? Check. Little 10-year-old kids shooting rifles? You name it, you got it. If anyone had ever dared tell Peckinpah to his face that a crazier gunfight existed in another movie somewhere, he would have thrown that person right into the middle of this one.
Quick personal anecdote: one night, years ago at Scout camp, as me and my fellow campers were eating in the dining hall, without any warning whatsoever, a massive food fight broke out. Pizza, soda, lettuce, cheese, condiments – anything that could possibly be thrown went flying in every direction at once. I was fortunate enough to crawl under the table just in the nick of time, with only my right arm remaining in the pathway of the edible projectiles. One troop member of mine was not as fortunate: as he was making his way out of the dining hall, he heard someone shout, “Hey kid!” Upon turning around, he looked up, and allowed his shirt to swiftly become the recipient of a giant bowl of salad dressing, poured onto him by a much older (and savvier) kid standing on the table. What I’m trying to say is, for about five minutes, this food fight was pure, utter chaos.
The gunfight at the end of The Wild Bunch is like that Scout camp food fight, just with a little more ketchup and a little less salad dressing.
Once the German goes kaput, all hell breaks loose. It shouldn’t be much of a fight – four guys vs. … 200? – except, early on, the Bunch zero in on a key piece of strategy:
The machine gun.
If they can just get to the machine gun, then they can really do some damage.
Unfortunately, a second German officer seems to have come to the same conclusion, quickly expelling a few rounds from behind that critical apparatus, but fortunately, Tector shoots that dude in the arm, and German Asshole #2 not only loses control of the gun but, in his agony, begins to inadvertently mow down Mapache’s soldiers. Whoops! And once Tector takes over, the film all but announces, “Now we’re cooking.” He certainly gives that gun a good ride, but Peckinpah has decided, “Actually, I think we need a bit more here.” So, Dutch promptly throws a pair of grenades, which, upon explosion, send a giant pile of soldiers flying gracefully through the air. That’s more like it.
Then Pike flips a table over, because, come on, in a scene like this, somebody’s gotta flip over a table, right?
Bonus points for the unexpected cutaway to a peek of the action through the clichéd black binocular circles (like a silent movie relic), supposedly mimicking Thornton’s point of view, as if he were catching a glimpse of the mayhem from several miles away and thinking to himself, “Dear God, all hell’s broken loose down there.”
And it’s right around this time where Dutch, finding himself in need of a bullet shield, spots a nearby female, and resourcefully concludes, “She will do.” Now why haven’t I ever thought of that? And moments later, I believe, is when Pike shouts “Bitch!” as he fires his shotgun directly into a woman’s chest, which isn’t a very nice thing for him to say but, to be fair, she has just shot him in the back.
Inevitably, Tector absorbs a few too many bullets to carry on, so Lyle takes over behind the behemoth, uttering some inspiring words to live by:
“AHHHH-EEEEE-AHHHH-IEEEE-UHH!”
But seriously: who expected Lyle, the half-witted clown prince of the Bunch, the butt of everyone else’s jokes, to let out such a blood-curdling scream – to sacrifice himself in the name of people to whom, until recently, he had owed no prior allegiance? I didn’t really think the big lunkhead had it in him.
Perhaps I’m stating the obvious, but no human being could possibly survive the amount of wounds the four members of the Bunch absorb for as long as they do, right? It’s like Rasputin Goes West. I’d probably be on the ground after the first bullet. Alas, around Bullet #63, Lyle eventually collapses, giving way to Pike who, when he finally takes his turn behind the machine gun, shoots a box of dynamite, which promptly explodes, because, to quote Lyle’s earlier statement, “Why not?” But remember: they kill … because they care.
And this is why I believe viewers of The Wild Bunch are not sick in the head if they find themselves feeling “elated” as they witness this bloodbath: not because they’re “numb to the violence” or because they think that “killing people is fun,” but because what they are witnessing is four tortured, conflicted characters finally reclaiming their souls and, for arguably the first time ever, doing the “right” thing – “right” in this instance being, yes, murdering scores of people. Counterintuitive, I know. But Mapache’s army is the like movie’s Nazis, and these four Rick Blaines, instead of continuing to “stick their neck out for nobody,” have at last decided to join the fight and show Major Strasser what time it is. It’s just that they’ve dug themselves so deep into the depths that their redemption can’t be achieved without their own bodies being slowly, mercilessly sacrificed to the cause. I mean, does this really look like that much “fun” to you? The poignant irony here is that, just at moment when the Bunch are meeting their demise, it’s arguably the exact moment when they’ve finally proven themselves worthy of truly living.
But even Rasputin eventually met his end, and when a cute little Mexican niño shoots Pike in the chest (Peckinpah: “You want your symbolism? I’ll give you your symbolism!”), it turns out to be the fatal blow. Our unflinching director sure doesn’t spare the viewer the grim details, as Pike, in slow motion, mouth agape, writhes in agony. Dutch stumbles over to Pike, screaming out “No, Pike! Pike!” as the two men’s bodies twitch convulsively, the last of their blood leaving their veins. I guess it just wasn’t their day.
The end.
But wait … what’s this?
Mention “the ending” of The Wild Bunch to most people, and the final shootout is probably what comes to mind. Pike, Dutch, and the Gorch brothers depart this mortal coil, and that’s it. Ah, but here’s where I think the film truly separates itself from, say the Part-Time Buddhist Pop Culture Guru’s 11th favorite film of the ‘60s – where it enters that rare echelon of Top 10 excellence. Because here’s where the film finally gets going. The shootout isn’t the end, my friends. It’s more like the prelude to the real end.
For you see, with the others out of the picture, the narrative suddenly becomes a tale of the survivors.
Calmly, reflectively, wistfully, Thornton arrives upon the scene to survey the carnage. What does fate hold in store for our reluctant pursuer? Perhaps he would rather be where Pike is right now? Who wants to stick around after your buddies have given their audience the encore to end all encores, while you’re treated to the glorious sight of their mangled, deformed corpses, with no one else to even share the sorrow with?
His bounty hunter companions clearly lack the sensitivity the moment requires, preferring to drool over the Bunch’s bodies like they’re undiscovered Caravaggios. “It’s just like a big old picnic!” T.C. hollers.
Coffer is equally oblivious: “T.C. … it’s them. It’s the Gorrr-ches. Mr. Thornton, it’s them.” Uh-huh, Thornton already knows who they are, but thanks.
“Hey, this here boy got some gold in his teeth, let me see your knife, Coffer.” Now, I know the Bunch were not the most admirable of men, but surely they deserve a little more dignity than this? How much is a gold tooth seriously worth anyway?
“There he is … there’s Piiiiike.”
“You ain’t so damn much now, are you, Mr. Pike?”
Coffer stretches his hands out authoritatively as he asks Thornton, “Shall we load up?” Geez, what the hell’s buggin’ that Thornton guy anyway? He’s acting like his best friend just died or something. They ride off without him, singing campfire songs, giddy as schoolkids on holiday.
And then, outside the gates of the compound that had, until recently, belonged to the general formerly known as Mapache … Thornton sits.
And sits.
And sits some more.
Dust clouds dance in the wind. The very earth itself proceeds to regenerate. The gears in the story, like the foreboding clouds overhead, continue to churn. There are gunshots in the distance – gunshots that, on initial viewing, one might be tempted to take as natural thunder, but I believe are merely the heavens raining their judgement down upon T.C., Coffer, and pals, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of this tale to Thornton’s Horatio.
He’s still not done sitting, though, and those clouds still haven’t finished churning. Suddenly, in an almost supernaturally eerie crossfade, a band of men on horseback appear, like pale ghosts. (Something about the combination of the grainy cinematography, the rushed rhythm of the dissolve from the prior shot into this one, and the tattered, dusty clothing always makes me feel like I’m witnessing the arrival of Men from the End of Time.)
At the front of the pack, there’s an old man.
It’s … Sykes?
Turns out the sprightly geezer, having been rescued by Angel’s revolutionary peasant pals, has unexpectedly ended up outliving all the others. He’s even got Mexican Obi-Wan with him! Sykes sees the Sitting Man. The Sitting Man sees Sykes. Aren’t they still kind of … enemies? Why were they enemies again?
Sykes asks Thornton what Thornton could just as easily be asking Sykes: “Didn’t expect to find you here.”
But if he’s looking for a fight with Thornton, he’s barking up the wrong tree. “Why not?,” Thornton retorts, eager to publicly separate himself from a task he abhorred. “I sent ‘em back – that’s all I said I’d do.”
“They didn’t get very far,” Sykes pointedly informs him.
“I figured,” Thornton responds, with more than a hint of satisfaction.
Well, that seems to have cleared the air. Taking a breath, Sykes now inquires, in a friendlier tone, “What are your plans?”
“Drift around down here. Try to stay out of jail.” Now, I don’t know about you, but those don’t sound like particularly glamorous plans.
Ah, but then. What follows is one of those movie moments that I think simultaneously comes out of the blue and yet is precisely where this story needed to go – perhaps the only direction in which this story could have gone. Sensing the lackluster nature of Thornton’s intentions, and equally eager to put the events of the past few days behind him, Sykes extends an invitation:
“Well, me and the boys here, heh, we got some work to do. You wanna come along? It ain’t like it used to be but, uh, it’ll do.”
Thornton can’t help but break into a grin, Sykes lets out his hearty old man cackle, and .. do I hear acoustic guitars strumming in celebration? These men, after all they’ve just been through, finding themselves in this situation, adopting this cause?
Too much. It’s really too much.
That militant hothead Angel whining about his “people”? Eh. But these two, tumbling into the fight in perhaps the most circuitous fashion possible? Now this I can get behind. Directionless, morally bereft men – villains, one might even argue – stepping beyond their tiny world of bank robberies and train heists to embrace the struggles of a distant people? Troubled, guilt-ridden souls whose stories seemed to have been all but written, unexpectedly finding themselves with one more hopeful chapter awaiting them? To quote Pike and Dutch, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
And so, as Thornton mounts his horse, the camera rises to the sky, ascending up, up, up, past the beams of a structure most viewers probably didn’t even realize was there, like the sudden closing of the curtain, signaling the end – and also, a new beginning.
But then – what’s this? It’s shots of the Bunch, resurrected from the great beyond, Anakin Skywalker-style, chuckling and beaming, perhaps appearing as the local peasants might one day remember them, as they tell their grandchildren the tale of the four crazy gringos who redeemed their souls by taking out an entire army despite being more outnumbered than a pair of nuns at a strip club.
And where do most of these slightly corny and yet emotionally fitting “flashback shots” stem from? Why, they stem from that moment after the failed opening raid, when the Bunch coped with the bitter taste of a robbery gone awry by breaking out into a communal fit of uncontrollable laughter, which, crude though it may have been, was perhaps that rare moment of temporary insight, when the Bunch were simply happy enjoying each other’s company – even when all they had to show for their efforts was a hand full of washers.
But honestly, I don’t even need those shots of the now-dead members of the Bunch as they appeared in “better times.” No, for me, it is the sight of Thornton picking himself up off the dusty Agua Verde turf and deciding to turn a new leaf, with Sykes’s laugh ascending to the heavens – not the macho humor centered around whores, not the spectacle of thousands of bodies being littered with bullet holes – that is the true essence of The Wild Bunch. These two lone survivors, these two grizzled Ishmaels, free to begin again, to start anew, to seize the noble ideals that the Bunch’s final gesture left dangling in the air, with one last adventure in them …
“It ain’t like it used to be … but it’ll do”?
Damn right, Freddie Sykes. You’re damn right.