Keoma: Life and Death
Keoma, the half-breed indian played to the stoic, tough-guy hilt by Franco Nero, returns to the place of his boyhood to find it turned over to bad men - his three half-brothers among them. Justice will be doled out, mayhem will ensue, and the villains will learn not to make the mistake of leaving Franco Nero alive. Not exactly original stuff, and Keoma borrows equal parts from Leone and Peckinpah and just about every other western on either side of the Atlantic. Yet, this late entry in the Italian Western cycle (Enzo Castellari, the film's director, claims it to be the last to have any success), is also a vision of pure apocalypse, taking the opportunity at every cue to bolster the theme of life and death not as contradictory, but as half-brothers themselves, forever bound together, each useless without the other.
Visions of Apocalypse
There is an old crone in the film who may or may not even exist, turning up at every significant junction, warning Keoma to turn back either with words or with her mere presence, moving into the frame from seemingly nowhere, the angel of death, a greek chorus of doom. Just before the final showdown, the film's ultimate display of revenge fulfilled, Keoma finds himself tied to a wagon wheel, crucified in the rain, a martyr to his own actions ( a theme not unique to this Italian western, however. See Questi's Django Kill!...If You Live, Shoot! (1967)).
Reborn
The film's last moments, with the shoot out between Keoma and his brothers, are juxtaposed with the birth of a boy to a peasant woman Keoma has harbored throughout; the brothers die and Keoma lives, the mother dies and the child lives. " A free man never dies." keoma calls out to the old crone who has been left in charge of the newborn baby, before turning his horse and riding out of hell, newborn himself, cleansed and purged.
This film, despite a slightly annoying soundtrack, is almost impossible to turn ones eyes from, and measures up to more famous westerns like Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), in terms of pure displays of vengeance. It also displays some incredibly clever camera staging and blocking, especially the scene where Keoma and his father are revealed through the bullet holes they create from behind a plank of wood, and another where four men facing down Keoma are blocked behind Keoma's extended fingers as he counts them down one by one before shooting them down.
Anyone with an interest in either Spaghetti Westerns or Franco Nero should check this film out. It is readily available on DVD.
