“There’s something special about the American West.” Kevin Costner thus explains his desire to tell that epic once again. To make a saga of four authentically Western films, like Dances with Wolves which is considered a milestone of the genre, which earned him two Oscars (best film and director) and with which he made his debut, thirty-four years ago, behind the camera to be taken.
The first chapter of Horizon: an American Saga, after having been previewed in Cannes, and last night in Los Angeles, will arrive at the cinema on July 4th.
For the actor and director, it was a great challenge that he has been working on for a long time, even thirty years, since Dances with Wolves launched him into the firmament of Hollywood stars. «Back then it was just one film and when no one wanted to produce it, I had the brilliant idea of making four». A gamble played by investing twenty million dollars out of one’s own pocket, about a quarter of the budget needed to produce it.
Costner, Sienna Miller, Sam Worthington, Giovanni Ribisi, Abbey Lee, Will Patton, Jena Malone, Michael Rooker, Danny Huston, Luke Wilson. The cast is stellar and the story – set during the Civil War just like Dances with Wolves – is epic. «But also tragic, embarrassing, shameful – says Costner – The story comes to life for me and I feel the need to tell it. At the time of the Civil War, there were only 30 million people in the United States, most of whom lived on the East Coast, when the North fought the South. An entire nation experienced shocking events, many of these people decided to go to the west, bringing with them their history, good and bad. I try to tell about them.”
The Western is American history but since the dawn of cinema it has been loved and appreciated by a vast international audience. The actor and director tries to explain the reasons: «I believe it depends on the fact that America has a relatively young history, which begins more or less 400 years ago and which is a history of people who arrive from Europe and from all over the world. There was a promise there. What those pioneers didn’t immediately realize was that a people had lived and flourished in that garden for 15 thousand years.” Horizon is his global project, in addition to producing, directing and starring in it, Costner wrote the screenplay together with Jon Baird and Mark Kasdan, and is also the author of the soundtrack.
At Cannes the first chapter was greeted with a ten-minute standing ovation. He recounts the emotion he felt: «I saw people smiling and applauding but I didn’t hear any noise». He was in a bubble, even tears appeared. “Then it was time to speak and I managed to stammer something.” Costner was accompanied by Sienna Miller, Jena Malone, Isabelle Fuhrman, Ella Hunt, Georgia MacPhail, Abbey Lee and Wasé Chief. «I came there armed with my seven female protagonists, because an important part of American history at the time rested on the shoulders of women, even if in the western genre women were almost never told». And then there are the Native Americans. «You can’t talk about the West without talking about the first peoples and the chaos we dragged them into. Of the damage we did to them, damage from which they have not yet recovered. I am aware of this, just as I am aware of those who arrived then and of the resourcefulness they had to implement to make a life for themselves in those territories. Two very different cultures, both in chaos, engaged in an unequal struggle.”
Anyone expecting lots of action scenes and firefights will be, at least partially, disappointed. «There is a simple man elected sheriff who has to decide on someone’s life or death, there is a woman who bathes only for the desire to be clean.
There’s another one that hides under a building for three days straight. Smaller stories that I felt needed to be told. There will also be shootings but I love telling what happened between one and the other.”
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