![]() Jack exhales and contemplates the encroaching modern world (or at least he appears to) and then turns to his horse, Whiskey, standing beside him. The open desert with the horse and rider and the open sky with the jet fighters are in contrast to one another and act as a epigraph to the tragic drama about to be played out in the film. Jack sits up, tilts his hat back and looks at the sky three jets make vapor trails across the clear, open air. At the same moment we hear jets overhead, and it seems that we are caught between two different eras of American history. A campfire and an open can of beans, then back to the right along the reclining, napping cowboy, Jack Burns, his face half-hidden under a cowboy hat. The Opening Shot: the camera pans down and to the left. Without tragedy, we forget the inevitable necessity of defeat. As myth, the courageous cowboy, again and again, rides off into the sunset as more "civilized" folks move into the land he domesticated with a six-gun. To this end, tragedy contains two salient elements: courage (defined by the ability to act violently) and the inevitable necessity of defeat. When we witness tragedy we acquire as one's own a reflexive mood, not only about the limits on freedom but about the power of stories to shape our attitudes and opinions. ![]() The cowboy epitomizes American individualism, Emerson self-reliance, and a connection to nature yet the film conveys a sense of loss as it plays out the conflict between social constraint and individual freedom as tragedy. Lonely Are the Brave is a successful adaptation of Edward Abbey's novel The Brave Cowboy, a cult classic which underscores the tension between the old and new world. In David Miller's film, western values, characterized by the myth of self, run up against the forces of law and order, the myth of state, inevitable and necessary, yet a misfire of the American dream. Afghanistan, Africa, Albania, American Samoa, Andorra, Anguilla, Armenia, Azerbaijan Republic, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Bermuda, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Central America and Caribbean, Chad, Comoros, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Djibouti, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), Fiji, French Polynesia, Gambia, Georgia, Greece, Guam, Guernsey, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Jamaica, Jersey, Kazakhstan, Kiribati, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macau, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Middle East, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nauru, Nepal, New Caledonia, Nicaragua, Niue, North Korea, Pakistan, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Philippines, Republic of Croatia, Republic of Cuba, Reunion, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, San Marino, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South America, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Swaziland, Syria, Tajikistan, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City State, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands (U.S.In Lonely Are the Brave, the opening shot demonstrates a thesis offered by Jane Tompkins in her essay "Language and Landscape." The stark, arid landscape puts "a whole set of values in place before a single word is spoken." The land is full of promise and yet calls for a certain kind of hero, a man as rugged as the land itself. ![]()
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