Brennan and Boone have the same desires: to thrive, to belong; to build a life, a legacy, a home. But one feels connected to the world while the other feels cheated, and thus is born the natural yin and yang of shared existence. Brennan and Boone are already far down their paths, irreversibly set in their ways, either charmed or jaded by the cruel inconsistencies and seeming unfairness of this world.
But others, those less experienced and wise, those ready to be guided by compassionate hands, have just started their journey – some of these kids are blessed with parents like the station manager, who wants his son to have opportunities he never did – others, like Billy Jack and Chink, were doomed from the beginning, abandoned by their guardians, stripped of a loving environment – those paths start far apart, but inevitably intersect, and those antithetical energies clash to a calamitous degree, to the point where even the precious life of an innocent child is ignored and callously thrown down a well, and selfishness and narcissism reign supreme.
That troubling landscape can feel intimate and suffocating, but also expansive and all-encompassing. Therein lies the genius of Boetticher’s unmatched aesthetic: his Westerns provide a snapshot of a world in constant transition – not just two intersecting paths, but millions upon millions of curving and winding paths that meet and depart and leave either hope or despair in their wake. The Tall T unflinchingly tackles this harsh reality, drifting between comedy and tragedy from moment to moment without hesitation, displaying the capriciousness of life in a manner that feels both disturbingly real and enchantingly mythological.
Brennan and Boone have the same choices to make in their paths towards fulfillment, and the myth, the reality of this inexplicable world depends upon them making opposite choices that must eventually come to a head. It’s a scary reality, seemingly cruel and unwarranted, but it’s also the only way we learn and advance and evolve.
