Title: The
Dark Valley
Country: Austria
Score: 8
Black-clad figures on horseback
silhouetted against alpine snow. A taciturn stranger, calling himself Greider, arrives
in a remote Austrian village that squirms restlessly under the thumbs of the six
brutish Brenner boys. Greider is here, so it seems, to take some photographs.
His camera, like a Winchester repeater that he stows in secret, is a novelty on
this frozen fringe. But Greider’s real purpose, sealed away inside but almost
oozing from his eyes, is revenge. Some men are going to die.
The Dark Valley is a western
that would drip with atmosphere if it wasn’t too cold for dripping. It has an
immediate lived-in look and feel, albeit a time and place we wouldn’t want to
live in, look at or touch. None of the timber is machine sawn. The dark, heavy
and dirty clothes are hand-made and utilitarian. The snow isn’t fake; the
actors (led by a mesmerizing Sam Riley) are clearly freezing their asses off.
This is a film of raw elements: water, wood, stone. Man, horse, gun. Even
the characters are stripped to their essence, sans psychological complexity or
explicit dialog. There are some florid touches in the edgy soundtrack and the
arguably injudicious use of slow-motion, but mostly the film succeeds on its
lean ferocity.
The first half of Dark Valley is
a patient exercise in mounting tension. Then the tension is released, in an
inevitably violent bloodbath. There is a scene where the villagers are sending
fresh lumber down the mountain, after the first snow has caked the flumes with
ice that has a palpable sense of cold and danger and death. The shotgun blasts
and swinging fists of the climax, well-choreographed as they are, just don’t
have the same subtlety. But another might just as easily feel the other way
around. This is a film with a lot to like in it and a must-see for fans of
revisionist westerns.
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