It can be difficult not to note the influence of Pulp Fiction when you're faced with a film like Americana - feature debut from writer/director Tony Tost. Despite Americana's rural South Dakotan (with a touch of Wyoming) setting, I immediately started drawing connections to Tarantino's iconic L.A. crime tale - Somewhat elliptical narrative, discreet titled chapters, unflinchingly violent, still quite funny in parts, and a noticeably intentional musical palette. There's even a classic moment of a tough guy (a Native American resistance fighter brilliantly played by Zahn McClarnon) discussing the pop cultural influences that led him to adopting his current moniker, Ghost Eye. I wouldn't call Americana derivative, though, and I think Tost brings a thoughtfulness to his film that helps nail down a tone that many attempt and few manage well. In addition to the crime milieu, Tost is also playing with the Western genre and this is where Americana gets the most interesting for me. I'm not the world's foremost expert on horse operas, but I caught more than one verbal and visual reference to notable predecessors - Old shoot em' ups on television screens, Pat Garret and Billy the Kid is invoked, and a doorway shot that could have been plucked right out of Sergio Leone film. The archetypes of the genre are also clearly on display - Americana features contemporary incarnations of cowboys and Indians and eventually sets them in conflict against each other. In this story, the fight isn't a territorial dispute but one over a piece of cultural history, a ghost shirt, appropriated by an affluent white man and considered valuable enough that other men will steal and kill to get their hands on it.
Desire drives most of the noirish narrative in Americana - the shirt represents a chance at wealth and an opportunity to get out of South Dakota. Halsey's Mandy wants to sell the shirt to finally break free of all the toxic men in her life and find somewhere safe for her little brother Cal (who, often hilariously, believes he is the reincarnation of Sitting Bull). Sydney Sweeney's Penny Jo dreams of a singing career in Nashville, despite her stammering speech, and sees the shirt as her ticket out. Regardless of their flaws, Tost demonstrates a real affection for his characters and that affection is best demonstrated by Paul Walter Hauser playing the guileless, lovelorn Lefty Ledbetter. Unlike the other characters in the film, Lefty isn't looking for riches - he only wants to fall in love and share his life with a nice girl. The object of his affections becomes Penny Jo which inevitably pulls him into the hunt for the ghost shirt - misguided maybe, but hardly greedy.
Each party and faction is inexorably drawn to the shirt for a final showdown at an off -grid Wyoming compound that isn't explicitly defined but is clearly driven by some kind of patriarchal, separatist hierarchy. The plot mechanics that pull everyone to this conflict faltered a bit for me, but the climax absolutely delivers in the kind of glorious shootout worthy of the best Westerns. The final moments involve both emotional reunifications and some tragic departures - but I especially appreciate that the women of the film (so often abused and overlooked in even the best examples of the genre) are granted the most catharsis and get at least some of what they were looking for.
Americana is darkly funny, violent, and presents an authentic and unique sense of place. It's getting a theatrical release this week (8/15) and is well worth seeking out.
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