Long Shadows

NOW IN THEATERS! One of the greatest movies of the year is the epic western masterpiece Long Shadows, directed by the phenomenal William Shockley. Shockley wrote the script with Shelley Reid and Grainger Hines, which is filled with lots of historical accuracy and authentic-sounding dialogue. It tells the tale of a poor orphan boy, Marcus Dollar (Blaine Maye), who has aged out of the Arizona territory orphanage and is being dropped off on the mean streets of Tucson. He was looked after by the kind nun, Sister Luisa Cabrini (Nancy La Scala), who gave him some money and wished him the best. Unfortunately, Marcus is in Tucson and is immediately drawn into a parlor run by the villainous Vivian Villere (Jacqueline Bisset). A frontier Englishwoman who feigns kindness while secretly beating sex workers she trafficks, Vivian rents Marcus a room, pocketing a large amount of the funds the nun gave him.

Vivian then goes to a room where she has locked up Dulce Flores (Sarah Cortez), a talented musician Vivian had hired as a piano player, and was now trying to traffic. Vivian informs Dulce that if she doesn’t want to be beaten again, she will have to go to the room where Marcus is and get to work. Marcus lets Dulce know she doesn’t have to give herself over to him, as he wouldn’t take any pleasure from her misery. Marcus suffers from seeing his parents murdered when he was a boy (Gavin Warren) by horse thieves, with memories that scar him like the neck wound made by the bandits when they left the boy for dead.

“Marcus and Dulce light out of town on a mule…”

Marcus and Dulce light out of town on a mule, with Vivian sending her drunken henchman, Ned Duxbury (Dominic Monaghan), after them, as she doesn’t want word getting out that she had beaten one of her w****s to death recently. After dropping Dulce off with her sister, Marcus heads out to his old homestead. He gets a gun drawn on him by the new owner of the place, Dallas Garrett (Dermot Mulroney), who holds his fire when he finds out the wrong that was done on Marcus. He allows Marcus to stay on and help out, which goes as well as it can until Marcus spots one of the men who killed his family, Len Kasper (Mike Markoff), in town. This is bound to create a pack of trouble for Sheriff Wes Tibbs (Grainger Hines) as well as territory judge Roy Holt (Chris Mulkey), as old wounds open up and bleed fire.

Director Shockley is known to the world best as Hank Lawson from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. He has had decades in the business on the other side of the camera, which helps explain his displayed mastery of many cinematic techniques throughout Long Shadows. His choices for shot arrangements and compositions rank those of the best directors in film history. There was a method William Wellman employed during the Golden Age of framing certain shots through a see-through barrier in the foreground, with Shockley making great use of it here, showing why it works so well.

There are also these cuts to small details of old west decorations, as well as eye-opening camera angles that raise the visuals to a European art film level. Yet despite all the craft employed, everything Shockley does is done to serve the story and immerse his audience in it. Every move made on this sagebrush chessboard is perfect, as this movie proves the Western will never die. The film’s Western perfection is as palpable as the chrome and curves on a classic American car.