Nevada Smith: The American Dante

Ok, I’ll admit there are some minor differences between Dante’s Divine Comedy and the 1966 movie classic, Nevada Smith. But basically Nevada Smith is a cowboy Dante for Americans.

At about age 20 (“midway upon the journey of my life” –given the short life expectancy of an adventurer in the Wild West), Max Sand loses his parents. They are tortured, mutilated, and then murdered by 3 villains. Sand thereupon becomes “lost in the dark wood” of the myth of redemptive violence. That myth is the basic plot line of gratifying revenge. Think of The Outlaw Josey Wales, Collateral Damage, or most any action movie or TV show you have ever seen. Mythologist Joseph Campbell coined the term and Biblical Scholar Walter Wink says it is the actual religion of our culture. Drawn from ancient Sumer, it is still our dominant belief system even though it runs 180 degrees opposite to Judaism and Christianity. Max sets out to kill the malefactors but the story is about his own spiritual transformation as he becomes Nevada Smith. (Compare Man On Fire in the previous blog.)

Just as Dante began his quest trusting in his own inadequate resources, so did Max. Just as Dante was immediately waylaid by three obstacles – a lion, a leopard, a wolf, representing envy, pride, and greed; Max falls in with 3 ne’er-do-wells who prove to be envious, proud, and greedy. They steal his gun and his horse. Thus Max, stranded in the desert, wanders forth imitating the ascetic spiritual seekers of the Near East and Russia where they are called “poustniks” or desert people.

There in the sagebrush wilderness, Max meets his first guide – Jonas Cord, a gun merchant played by Brian Dennehy (who by the way appeared in the mini-series A Season In Purgatory.)Dante’s first guide was Virgil, a virtuous pagan who was able to help Dante along the way – but only so far. Just so, the gun merchant is not a Christian and is to some extent caught in the violence myth himself. But he has a good heart and just as important, good sense. He trains Max in the use of guns, but also in the life skills needed to do combat with viscous killers. Cord imparts what the Hebrew Scriptures call “hachma,” practical wisdom, knowing how to do the job. That is the foundation for the larger Greek version of Wisdom, “Sophia” -- regardless of what one is doing, even if it is drinking, gambling, and shooting, you need to know how to do it well. That is where Max properly begins his formation.

Max succeeds in killing the first murderer but is injured in the process. He is taken in by the Kiowa. Max is himself half Kiowa. How this interlude fits the story is not clear to me. But I think it may be that the bad guys will consistently characterize Max’s determined quest for vengeance as typical of his Indian blood. So this part of the movie shows the Kiowa urging Max to abandon his quest to stay with them. It may be there to prevent the racist reading of the plot.

Since the 2nd murderer is doing time in a Louisiana prison camp, located in a swamp, Max deliberately gets himself convicted of bank robbery so he can go there too. The brutal camp oddly allows conjugal visits by Cajun women who work in the nearby rice paddies. Granted, this is a stretch of credibility, but it advances the plot. Here Max meets his second guide, Pilar, a Cajun woman played by Suzanne Pleshette (deep sigh from the blogger). She helps Max and the murderer (who Max has befriended) escape in a canoe. In the swamp, Max guns down the unarmed man despite Pilar’s urgent pleas not to do this thing. It is then we know the significance of the crucifix she wears around her neck. She means it. During the escape, Pilar was bitten by a water moccasin. After the killing of murderer, she lies on the shore dying. Max wants to save her, but she will not go with him. She says he has used her to commit murder. She does not want “to die in sin looking at (his) face.” While Max is preparing the canoe to leave, Pilar dies. Her death is a judgment on Max who has lied to and manipulated her for his own violent ends. Then the righteous avenger says “I am sorry.” It is a moral moment. Remember Dante. His second guide was the Christian Beatrice whose death was the turning point in Dante’s life as the Cajun woman’s death ultimately proved to be for Max.

That death in the swamp was a moral moment but not a definitive conversion. Dante views life as the soul’s journey toward God and Harold Robbins who wrote the novel which was the basis for this film apparently agrees. Max is touched but not yet transformed. He continues his pursuit of the last villain, Joe Fitch (Karl Malden). In the vicinity of Susanville I would guess, he falls into the hands of Fitch’s gang who drag him with their horses through a river. Darned if that baptismal imagery doesn’t keep happening at just the right spot in the story (see Man on Fire post). As he comes out of the water, and is about to be dragged to death, out of nowhere, a Franciscan priest, Fr. Zaccardi intervenes, stops the violence, and take the physically and spiritually injured Max to his home, which from the cell where Max stays appears to be a monastery though we see no other monks. Max has met his 3rd spiritual guide.

“But wait,” you say, “Dante only had Virgil and Beatrice.” Not so. Even Beatrice could not take Dante the last leg of his journey to God. The Blessed Virgin was his final guide. Just as Mary represents Mother Church, so Mother Church was well represented by Fr. Zaccardi. He takes Max into the church building. Max has never been in a church before. He is most struck by the crucifix. Fr. Zaccardi asks if Max has ever seen that man (Jesus) before. Max says he has. He saw him on a silver chain. (Pilar’s). Fr. Zaccardi gives Max a Bible, explains the faith, and tells his own story of the murder of his own parents. Max listens but is stubbornly unpersuaded and continues in his hunt for the wicked Joe Fitch.

By the time he meets Fitch, Max’s name is on wanted posters everywhere and Fitch knows Max Sand is after him. So Max takes the new name of Nevada Smith. The first name expresses his memory of the home he seemed to have lost. The second name shows his change from the raw material of sand (perhaps a reference to earth and humanity (“adamah” Hebrew word for humanity formed from the earth) to Smith suggesting a craftsman who forms the raw material into something of value. Eventually, he chases Fitch down and shoots him in the leg and hand, disabling him from doing further harm – but decides in that moment not to kill him. Fitch is furious and taunts Max to finish him off, calls him a weak coward. But Max will not yield to the temptation of redemptive violence. He turns away.

We know what happened to Dante. He received the beatific vision and was “lost in wonder, love, and praise.” What will happen to Nevada Smith? Will he go back to partner with Cord, to live with the Kiowa, or to join the Franciscans? Dante took us all the way on his story of redemption, but Nevada Smith has taken us along the journey only far enough to see the decisive step of turning. Conversion is not a sudden about face. To “shuve” (turn around in Hebrew) or experience “metanoia” (same thing in Greek) is a slowing, then an arching, curving half circle that sets us off in the new direction – headed toward life instead of death.

Man On Fire And The Future Of Faith

If you have not seen Man On Fire, the superb action movie starring Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning, Christopher Walken, and Radha Mitchell, and if you want to be surprised at the plot twists, read no further. Rent and watch the movie first.

As I was re-watching Man On Fire last week, I was struck by the power of our meta-narrative, the Christian story, to shape the narratives that move us even in action movies. As this film begins, two retired assassins (Washington and Walken) meet in Mexico. Out of nowhere, the protagonist assassin, John Creasy (Washington) asks, “Do you think God will forgive us for what we’ve done?” Walken’s character answers “No.” Creasy nods “I didn’t think so.” It is a short but absolutely serious conversation. Not a hint of irony. We have met characters who take damnation seriously, because they are living it.

Creasy takes a job as body guard to a little girl (Fanning) and is captivated by her innocence and her seemingly inexplicable love for him. She loves him because he is sad. It is a compassion that he does his best to resist, but is nonetheless touched. He becomes her swimming coach and teaches her the way to freedom from fear. Her swims are baptismal plunges into liberty. Each night as the alcoholic body guard drinks his whiskey to forget, he faithfully reads his Bible to remember.

When the girl is kidnapped and apparently killed, the plot moves into the all too familiar “myth of redemptive violence” (Walter Wink, Joseph Campbell) as Creasy tracks down the killers and executes them one by one. But after each killing, he swims in the child’s pool, a baptismal act in which blood washes from him – the stain of sin or the blood of life?

When she turns out to be alive, the myth of redemptive violence ends. Crucifixion religion leads to perpetual violence. (Rene Girard). But resurrection religion shifts his focus to a life for others. That is the point at which he stops killing to restore his sense of moral order and chooses instead to die to save someone he loves.

It is a beautiful story of a soul saved at great cost. What strikes me is that this story, which simply must be told and which we need so much to hear, could not be told and could not be heard without the context of the Christian story. The question “Will God forgive us?” would not arise. The Bible, the baptisms, the death and resurrection would not signify without the context of the Creeds. So many stories would not be possible without the meta-narrative of the Christian faith -- not just action movies like Man on Fire and cult classics like Easy Rider, but real classics like A Christmas Carol and Les Miserables.

Sometimes I am sanguine about entering the post-Christian era, thinking Christianity is at its best when it is counter-cultural anyway. But then I remember that culture is a channel of grace and that channel will be diminished without our signs, our symbols, and most of all, our story. I understand that W. H. Auden was still a young atheist when he went to Spain to fight in the Civil War. At one point, when the left (Auden’s own side) was triumphant; they silenced all the church bells. On Sunday, when Auden heard the silence, he knew he did not want to live in a world without church bells, and that meant he did not want to live in a world without faith. Even if he did not believe, he needed someone to believe. He needed the culture to believe.

As one who lives neck deep in the institutional church, I am as ambivalent about it as any “spiritual but not religious” person. But I do not look forward to a world without church bells, a world without faith – or worse yet, a world in which faith is abandoned to the hands of the fearful, the bigoted, and the mean-spirited. So I continue to pray and hope against the dry sociological data so ready, so eager to write our obituary, that we may yet live, that bells may continue to ring on Sunday mornings, and that people who believe and people who do not believe will at least know our story.

Is there any reason to sustain my hope? If not, I plan to hope without a reason. (Miguel de Unamuno). But here’s a little thing I imagine. My 2 year old grandson loves to march around the room carrying a cross (or a fly swatter if no cross can be found, but he calls the fly swatter “cross”) singing “knick knack paddy whack” or the ABC song. I imagine him as an old man after the culture has forgotten us still practicing “the old religion” like Obi Wan Kenobi and respectable adults warning their young people to “have nothing to do with that crazy old wizard.” (Star Wars IV). If our story is true, it will be hard to kill.

Art In Goldfield & Tonopah: Contrasting Aesthetics

The art scene in Tonopah could never be mistaken for the art scene in Goldfield. The main feature in Goldfield – and there is no competition – is right along 95 on the northern outskirts of town. It is a field of car art. There are simply no words to describe what some post-modern sculptor has done there to blow function apart, without obliterating the vestiges of function, while celebrating form for form’s sake. It is a parking lot with cars. But the cars have been mixed and mingled with all sorts of things. One small car sits atop another. One van wears a speedboat for a hat. On the grilles and fenders, the cars are adorned with toys, cattle skulls, whatever you call those curved little metal troughs that you spit (or worse) into in the hospital -- all manner of objects, generally having once had a practical use, now displayed like something from Andy Warhol for the sake of their shape and color – unremarkable when seen apart but amazing in the context of a community of forms assembled according to a design formulated in a uniquely appreciative mind. Yes, Goldfield. Who would have imagined it?

The public sculptures of Tonopah are of a mostly – perhaps not entirely – different order. The Tonopah exhibit is not concentrated in a single parking lot, but adorns the whole downtown. There are two basic kinds of sculpture. One is rust colored impressionistic representations of people from by-gone days. It is a historical theme – like the bronze statues of Boulder City – only the Tonopah figures are deliberately rougher and rustier. The other Tonopah kind of sculpture is arrangements of machinery – cog wheels, beams, mining equipment – which is somewhat like the cars of Goldfield. But Tonopah’s collections of metal are one color while the Goldfield displays are deliberately garish. And there is a deeper difference. Tonopah’s machinery sculptures and human sculptures are of the same color and texture – both roughly rusted. It doesn’t take an art critic to know that this similarity is deliberate and it is saying something. The question is: what? And here context may help to interpret. If I saw this likeness of humanity and machinery in Berkeley, I’d think it was a Herbert Marcuse critique of utilitarian capitalism dehumanizing workers. But not in Tonopah. I may be wrong. There may be some remnant of IWW radicalism at work in this art. But I don’t see it. This looks to me like a tribute to the resilient strength and courage of a mining town where people work like their equipment and with their equipment – together digging a life out of the earth, the iron rusty earth. We are more than what we do, these sculptures say, but we become ourselves while doing. Unlike the post modernist form for form’s sake of Goldfield, Tonopah’s art suggests stories as wild as the West and as human as anything by Zola or Hugo.

Speaking of great writers, not all the art in Tonopah is visual. There’s literature too these days. The best used bookstore I have yet found in Nevada is Whitney’s Books – open well into the evening. Whitney’s also hosts the AA and Al-Anon groups, which strikes me as showing some social conscience. Like any used bookstore, they carry the good, the bad, and the ugly. Someone at some point appears to have been a fan of Rod McKuen – groan. But I picked up two A. B. Guthrie novels and found several by Susan Howatch, as well as lots of classics – all for low, low prices.

So if you should be driving through Tonopah someday, don’t just think of the Mexican food at El Marquis, the historic ambience of Tonopah Station with its 1940’s Coca Cola posters and vintage gaming machines, or the educational value of touring the mining museum. Look around at the public art. And by all means stop in at Whitney’s Books.