Viva la Revolucion ... not ...

Rating: 8/10 (30 December 2014)

"Duck, you sucker!" shouts a charming and friendly James Coburn to Rod Steiger after he's just planted a baton of dynamite in his wagon. In other words, get ready for a big 'bang' and protect yourself. The line is repeated so many times it became the film's running gag, a catchphrase so to speak, in fact, the film's title, translated from the Italian "Giu la Testa" : "Bow your head".
Yet the title doesn't quite work. There's something cheap, familiar, not worthy of a film in the same vein than the 'Dollars' trilogy and "Once Upon a Time in the West". An odd choice indeed for a movie that opens with a warning about the meaning of revolution, something that made me want to tell today's youth, notably in Arab countries 'hear, hear'. Revolution isn't a social dinner, it isn't made of elegance and courtesy, it's brutal, bloody and innocent people get killed for it.
And anyone with a brain can start it but once it starts, no one can predict its outcome, much more whether the new order will be better or worse than the previous. The only certainty in Revolution is that the wealthy survives, and people are the suckers. These Libyans or Egyptians who were so eager to throw the power out, what did they win? Are they in a better situation? Sergio Leone, a man of vision, witnessing the revolutionary waves that shook Europe in the late 60's and Italy was no exception, and couldn't see past the violence, the bloodshed and terrorism.
This is not to say that the Maestro didn't have a political conscience, "Once Upon a Time in the West" spoke powerful statements about the end of the western myth where modest entrepreneurs were sacrificed on the altar of progress and civilization, when capitalism killed the frontier spirit. The opening of "Duck you Sucker" works like a powerful continuation, Juan, a Mexican vagrant, urinates on a rock full of ants, an animalistic metaphor reminding of Sam Peckinpah's masterpiece "Wild Bunch" where kids were feeding red ants with a poor scorpion.
Juan pees on the ants, like the passengers of the stage he'll get in, pee on the insects peasants are. Distinguished bourgeois and aristocrats treat peasants with the same contempt and condescension's while Juan acts dumb to comfort their opinions, before fooling them. They get carjacked, their clothes stolen and left naked with nothing. This act seals a brief victory of peasants but don't get yourself fooled, this isn't a victory of classes, this is not "Viva Zapata!", it's pure and simply taking money, wealthy people are loved for their money more than hated for their attitude. And Juan is not interested in politics.
On the same day, an oddity passes through him and his family, a man riding a motorcycle, an easy rider in the real meaning of the word. His face is friendly and smiling, his name is Sean, or John, the English version of Juan, this is how predestined to meet the two men were. Sean is an expert of dynamite but he's not interested in politics not anymore. Juan doesn't care, he needs his skills to open the safe of Mera Verde's bank. Both men feel different, Sean is classy and stoic, Juan is extroverted and hot-tempered but both have one thing in common, they have no faith in revolution.
Yet Sean has a reason, he used to believe, he was an IRA agent, but he was betrayed by his closest friend, as the film progresses, the many flashbacks punctuating the action reveal more and more about Sean, his life in Ireland, and a special triangular relationship, these parts are conveyed by one of Ennio Morricone's most emotional themes, something that resonates as a powerful eulogy to a past drown in an ocean of nostalgic tears and the ashes of a faith that will never recover. Sean doesn't believe in revolution, because it's men's work, and men ought to betray. Facts will prove him right. Juan believes revolution is lead by men who can read telling those who can't to fight. The character of Romano Valli proves him right.
If anything, Sean incarnates the second title given to the film "A Fistful of Dynamites", something that conveys the same catchiness than an Eastwood film, Eastwood who refused to reprise his iconic role, rightfully letting Coburn's contagious smile illuminating the screen and making one with Rod Steiger who took Eli Wallach's place. Steiger's character suggests the idea of "Duck you Sucker", "bow your head, you peasant, you're the one who'll get screwed at the end". And the film is full of some of the most brutal massacres and scenes of execution including a heart-wrenching one where peasants get casually massacred on trenched like cattle., where a whole family can be killed. This is ugliness after idealism. So much for the chants.
The whole irony of the film is that the most disillusioned men about revolution, the most eager to go to America, after having nothing to lose, will be the most helpful to the cause, somewhat because deep in themselves they have courage, they have strength, and they are part of a vanishing breed, men who follow their instincts. And this is what Leone movies are about, men who act, who help themselves, who save, they're disillusioned but they'll give the meaning their life deserve.
And together, Coburn and Steiger will write one of the most underrated Western stories, one whose only fitting title, was "Once Upon a Time the Revolution" forever incarnated in my mind by these irritating "Sean, Sean" as irritating than a past obsessively haunting your past, like Harmonica's tragedy, like Noodle's phone call, Coburn in his greatest role, is a man haunted by a past helping to build the future of man who lost his.
And isn't the revolution, a way of killing the past for a better future?