Keoma

Keoma (1976) is generally treated as the last great spaghetti western. The genre was already exhausted by then, and Enzo G. Castellari gave it a proper close. Keoma is half Native American, returning from the Civil War, and finds his home town held by plague and by the gang of a man he once fought alongside. His three half brothers are in that gang. The film does not look like other westerns. Castellari uses slow motion heavily, keeps placing the camera behind some obstruction, and stages flashbacks without cutting away: Keoma watches his own childhood while his adult self stands in the same frame. The music is the most argued about element. The pieces written by the brothers Guido and Maurizio De Angelis narrate the action like a ballad, with two voices constantly cutting in to tell you what is happening. Some viewers consider it the soul of the film and some cannot bear it. There is no middle ground. The script was not finished. Castellari disliked the existing draft, so they wrote the following day's scenes each evening. Franco Nero says he wrote some of his own dialogue. It runs 100 minutes. Good for: spaghetti westerns, seventies Italian cinema, and genre landmarks. Less good for: the violence is harsh, the music may wear you down, and the plot is loose.