When I was a child, I loved Westerns. Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Yul Brynner…I would love to make a list of stars who I admired in that cowboy hat, carrying a gun which made the ultimate statement of masculinity. As a kid, I never looked for logic in any of the stories. Naturally, since I never even realized that films were driven by some kind of coherence in the narrative. Being young has its advantages, you know.
Then came a time when my voyage of discovery took me to diverse cinematic worlds. I had grown older and, suddenly, the average Western seemed to be riddled with loopholes. To start with, the Good versus Evil angle was too clearly defined. The grey streaks in a 'good' guy's character justified themselves most automatically. More often than not, a bad guy was simply bad who was meant to be killed. Women occupied the ambiguous fringes, so much so that one was made to wonder what they were doing in the film anyway. The narrative was generally like the ambience of the plot: there was absolute lawlessness without any creative explanation whatsoever.
Like many young film lovers who had started to watch films that looked around the stereotype, my disillusionment tormented me a lot. I wanted to see a more evolved Django, but that was difficult to find. I wanted to hear background music that sounded completely different. This was the time when raindrops kept falling on my head all of a sudden. I loved the feeling since they made me believe how and why Westerns could go well beyond the kill-and-end and got-the-treasure formulas. I enjoyed the way Butch thought. I loved the way the Sundance Kid did his shooting act. The climax made my low just as the twosome's famous jump from the cliff made me smile.
Two decades after I saw the film for the first time, I continue to return to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid over and over again. And, I am sure I am not the only one who turns into a part of the gang that Butch heads before his life takes a turn for the different. Be it George Roy Hill's direction or William Goldman's script – and of course, the chemistry between Paul 'Butch' Newman and Robert 'Sundance' Redford – the film has so many strengths that the ultimate product goes to a different level altogether.
As far as I am concerned, the film's real hero is the script. The two main characters - both mavericks in their own ways, and out to make a fortune - are a study in contrast. Butch is a man of ideas, and miles away from the stereotyped Western hero therefore. When he returns to his gang with Sundance and finds a character (Ted Cassidy) waiting to take over, for instance, he challenges the guy and makes him hit the ground with a kick!
That is a hilarious moment, as is the occasion when both Sundance and Butch need to swim to escape: but, the former makes a sudden confession that he doesn't know how to do it. While Butch is taken aback, we, as the viewers, cannot keep our laughter in check. Again, when Butch rides the bike – with the lovely Katherine Ross who plays Sundance's girlfriend for company – the song 'Raindrops keep falling on my head' makes us think: hey, is this a Western, or something completely different?
Why the chemistry between Butch and Sundance works is because the latter is very close to the mainstream Western hero. Hats off to Goldman, who thought of an idea in which opposites could combine and create so much of an impact, and also because he introduced humour so subtly that we were made to rewind the DVD and watch the scenes time and again. The climax was brilliantly written, the sadness in the twosome's deaths shown with a visual that made an unforgettable impact.
If this film hadn't won so many Academy Award nominations – and picked up four eventually – it would have been shocking. And, I am sure there are others like me who started believing how Westerns could deliver so much more just because they saw this one. Brokeback Mountain or even Dead Man: there have been many films whose background is typically Western but whose content inhabits some other world altogether. Don't know how many of them were inspired by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
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