The decline of Leone

Rating: 1/10 (24 June 2011)

If you like Leone's films from the 60's like The Good the Bad and the Ugly, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon A Time in the West, then you may be in for a shock if you expect a similar film in Once Upon A Time in the West.
This is the first film Leone directed in 13 years from the the last film he directed in 1971 'Duck you sucker'. I don't know what happened to him in his personal life in those 13 years but it shows in this film. A film is in a lot of ways a reflection of the director, his taste, his morals, his emotions. And to me this film was dull, at times disgusting, confusing and depressing. It's nothing like the vibrant TGBU or the emotional For a few dollars more. To me, after TGBU, Leone was on the decline. Even though there were some nice scenes in Once upon a time in the West (especially at the end), the story and the characters were lacking.
Leone's style became more pretentious as he attempted to make more 'serious' films. You can see that mostly in the endless closeups of the actors faces while they speak their often vague dialogue. It looks like Leone was trying to hard to be 'deep' and 'intense' to the point where he lost the humanity in his characters and they became his puppets trying too hard to impress us when we couldn't identify with any of them.
That's the main problem with this film as well. It's hard to care for any of the characters because they are all quite inhuman. The motives of the characters are never really revealed which makes it hard for us to identify with them and we're completely disconnected from them, as they start doing things that make us cringe, like rape, for instance.
After more than an hour viewing this film, I'm wondering what I'm watching and why. For the most part..I just don't care. There's nothing to draw you in and interest you. Sure the cinematography is nice, the score and the set pieces are impressive. These are the three things that deceive people into believing that they're watching a quality film. A lot of people who like this film are huge fans of Leone and that alone makes them bias. Also the fact that this was Leone's dream project and final film makes a lot of fans of refer to this film as the greatest film that Leone made which to me is laughable. The final reason I can think of why people would like this film is because it's vague. As I mentioned; there's a lot of close-ups on actors faces with a dramatic music in the background. Some people (while viewing these) will think of events that took place in their own lives and be moved by those and feel like it's the movie doing this to them which is not the case.
It's sad how Leone made one of the best films of all time in TGBU and ended his career with this depressing, long and troubling film. This film is often compared to the Godfather(2) but they have absolutely nothing in common other than the fact that both are 'gangsterfilms'.