Seraphim Falls

Seraphim Falls, David Von Ancken’s first feature film (previously the director of episodes of Oz and The Shield), fell through the cracks, given only a limited theatrical release by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Western film fans may not know it exists. While it’s not made of original cloth, it’s a credibly fashioned movie in the tradition of John Ford and Anthony Mann. Its plot is a missing link between Clint Eastwood’s Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Alejandro Inarritu’s The Revenant (2015).

Seraphim Falls is headed by two Irish actors: Liam Neeson as ex-Confederate colonel Carver, and Pierce Brosnan as ex-Union soldier Gideon. It’s written and directed by Von Ancken with sharp focus on Carver, accompanied by four paid bounty hunters, and his relentless pursuit of Gideon over mountains, ice, snow and eventually hot, dry desert. Carver’s motives are only gradually revealed. Gideon doesn’t speak for the first twenty minutes of the film, but the storytelling concentrates on the moment Gideon is shot in the wild, out of nowhere, and treacherously falls down a mountainside, is swept by a powerful tide of water and slammed down a waterfall — all in below-freezing, snowy weather. The actors of Seraphim Falls worked in horrendous conditions and Brosnan got the brunt of it.

Gideon’s not only a survivor but clever, as he begins scaring and eradicating the members of Carver’s crew. The pursuit brings Carver’s gang to a farmhouse where Gideon received help, a busy railroad under construction, and into a Christian community on the move. A short scene with the pursuers coming across an abandoned wagon, a piano, a violin and a book long buried in the dust and mud in the middle of nowhere (their owners likely long dead) speaks to the drive of establishing civilization in far-gone territory.

As the hallucinogenic heat of the desert bears down on the two protagonists, Angela Huston makes an appearance as a devilish con women. The hot, sordid, physical fight in a wasteland of flat, dry plain clearly recalls Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed.

If Seraphim Falls has a fault, it’s that it is thematically so similar to earlier works. The strength of the actors and our piercing need to know what happens next make up for that, as does the Academy award-winning cinematography of John Toll (The Thin Red Line, Braveheart, Breaking Bad). Shot partly in Oregon and mostly in New Mexico, Seraphim Falls is beautiful to see. Not a bit of it looks shot on a studio lot; the actors and characters are exposed to the wilds and surrounded by stunning vistas.

Credit also goes to Harry Gregson-Williams’ full-bodied orchestral score, probably the best of his career, and one which has never been released on CD.

Seraphim Falls also features Xander Berkeley (The Walking Dead), Michael Wincott (Westworld), Ed Lauter (Alfred Hitchcock’s Family Plot), Tom Noonan (The Leftovers) and Kevin J. O’Connor (There Will Be Blood).

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Aug 12