It would be unreasonable to expect Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, as the first of a planned four-film series about the expansion of the American West, to tie all of its narrative threads together. But Kevin Costner’s grand opus gets off to an inauspicious start, with its various storylines often muddled by the consistently haphazard editing, to the point that it becomes difficult to tell how many of the countless characters are related to one another.
If the audience is meant to be privy to where things are heading, there should at least be some clearly defined motivations or character development, perhaps even something resembling narrative momentum. But Horizon Chapter 1 is all table-setting, with the stories lacking in polish and dramatic momentum and the characters never developed beyond archetypes. There’s even little sense of either geographic or temporal scope to make this entry feel like part of the all-encompassing saga of mass settlement that the series is clearly meant to be.
There are ostensibly three main discernible threads that have been woven into the film’s 181-minute runtime. The first follows a former sex worker, Marigold (Abbey Lee), who gets caught up in the machinations of her landlord Lucy’s (Jena Malone) troubled past catching up to her, and sets off to safety with the aid of the mysterious Hayes Ellison (Costner). The second follows a mother, Frances (Sienna Miller), and daughter, Lizzie (Georgia MacPhail), who take off with the Union Army, under the care of Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington), after the rest of their family, and most of their fellow townsfolk, were slaughtered by Apaches. And the third, which doesn’t even get going until a full two hours into the film, tracks a wagon train as it moves along the Sante Fe Trail under the guidance of the gruff, demanding Matthew (Luke Wilson).
There are also numerous dangling threads, including one about the infighting within the Native American tribe that raided Frances’s town. That story isn’t returned to again after the one-hour mark, other than the occasional mention from white folk of Pionsenay (Owen Crow Shoe), who’s something of a Geronimo for the way he strikes fear in the heart of whoever hears his name. This thread will likely be picked up on in Horizon Chapter 2, but given this film’s general disinterest in the Native American experience, it’s also possible it’ll just drift into the ether.
Indeed, drifting is an apt word to describe how Horizon Chapter 1 sense of narrative progression. The film isn’t merely discursive but also hopelessly fragmented, as it feels like every few scenes from every story were cut from the edit at random. While elliptical editing can certainly be an aid in this type of sprawling epic, the time jumps here simply pass over critical information. We’re left wondering where exactly did Marigold’s husband (or boyfriend?) come from and how did she meet up with him when Hayes was dragging her all around the San Pedro Valley. There’s also a blossoming love story between Frances and Gephardt that could have been quite moving had the filmmakers not, well, cut past the entire blossoming part.
It’s hard to argue that Horizon Chapter 1 should be any longer, given it’s already quite the slog as it is. But it also feels less like a film that’s too long than an entire 10-episode season of television that was hacked up into a three-hour prologue of a film. If the difference between Costner’s last two directorial efforts—1997’s The Postman and 2003’s Open Range—already proved that he’s far better working with tighter, more focused character dramas than sprawling epics, Horizon Chapter 1 serves as a doubly painful reminder of that truth.
That the film bafflingly ends on an extensive montage of scenes and characters to come in Horizon Chapter 2, finishing on a close-up of Giovani Ribisi (who was not in this film at all until then), is somehow fitting. It’s as if the filmmakers are finally as ready as the audience to move on with their story. If only they showed some of that urgency in the previous 178 minutes.
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Maybe YOU lack the skills and imagination necessary to weave together a journey in progress and recognize its ultimate destination.
I won’t be as critical as Bette but I feel you are being overly harsh in giving this only one star. I went into it expecting the minimum due to all the negative reviews. With the exception of the last 15 minutes or so I was able to follow the story very easily and found myself readily engaged. it did not feel like a long movie to me. I feel if he had ended it slightly different it would have worked really well. I’d give it a solid 6.4/10. Besides, at least he is trying to be creative and not following a formula like 90% of the drivel that hits the big screen nowadays.