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Despite having quite a temperament, the disproportionate western of the ghost Costner gets bogged down in a heavy classicism.
Where is the cinema in Horizon: an American saga ? We were predicting everywhere, we were putting our finger in the eye. Developed for a long time by Kevin Costner who initially planned to make it in the wake ofOpen Range (2003), this western of disproportionate scope (a plethora of subplots unfolding across the four corners of the American territory) will ultimately be spread over three films of more than three hours each. He said he interrupted filming to come to Cannes. Yet Costner, who used his personal savings to give substance to what is, in the context of contemporary Hollywood, akin to a crazy fad, blocks his debauchery of landscapes, carnage and settings larger than life in a rickety 1.85 (wide) format and a narrative rigor which makes it look very much like a television series.
It’s frustrating because the film, as long as we allow it to shed its kitsch music and its heavy classicism, has quite a temperament. In the descendants of Fenimore Cooper, Costner recounts the conquest of the west like a dark epic, an epidemic of violence contaminating all individuals, down to children and natives, without ever contradicting the dreams of those he films. Or the dream of his country, which in the film takes the form of a poster for the colony of Horizon, a martyr outpost in Apache territory where all the obstinacy and madness of those who erected the United States are concentrated. United su