The Set­tlers review – a bru­tal­ly vio­lent anti-western

IIt’s to decide whether Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s baroque range west­ern, The Set­tlers, is a response to or con­tin­u­a­tion of the roman­ti­cised colo­nial vio­lence that was once a main­stay of the genre’s clas­sic era. It’s cer­tain­ly a film that’s been aggres­sive­ly sapped of the com­ic-book colour and pea­cock­ing machis­mo of yore, instead pre­sent­ing a new fron­tier char­ac­terised by squalid vio­lence and wide­spread confusion.

Tier­ra del Fuego 1901, and young, part-indige­nous mes­ti­zo Segun­do (Cami­lo Aran­cib­ia) assists in con­struct­ing a bor­der fence that snakes into the infi­nite hori­zon. Dis­placed Eng­lish gang boss Alexan­der MacLen­nan (an effec­tive­ly brusque Mark Stan­ley) has zero truck for those unable to put in a sol­id shift, exe­cut­ing injured work­ers like one would a lame horse.

The over­seer is called upon by land baron Don José Menén­dez (Alfre­do Cas­tro) to blast a path through to the sea to ensure safe cross­ings for live­stock, the inti­ma­tion being the land should be cleared of every­thing and every­one, no ques­tions asked.

And so, Alexan­der, Segun­do and a mouthy hired gun named Bill (Ben­jamin West­fall) head off into the wilder­ness on a covert mis­sion of, if not all-out geno­cide, then a man­aged cul­tur­al era­sure where indige­nous peo­ple must make the choice of adapt to west­ern man­ners or suf­fer the con­se­quences. Segun­do, mean­while, is trapped in the moral bind of hav­ing sym­pa­thies for both sides, but who is also a vic­tim of this sys­tem and must kill on command.

At its core, The Set­tlers is a film about cap­i­tal­ism and its dis­con­tents, as it threads the nee­dle between the avari­cious needs of the trade barons and their eager­ness to use vio­lence as a means to an end. Yet Haber­le notes that, with­in the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, every­one is a los­er apart from the one per­son (usu­al­ly a man) on top, as the mem­bers of our small ret­inue dis­cov­er on their per­ilous journey.

Though there is much empha­sis on the daunt­ing majesty of the Chilean land­scape, there are reg­u­lar episodes of shock­ing vio­lence that arrive in a vari­ety of extremes. A team of secu­ri­ty guards drink and fight through the bore­dom of pro­tect­ing a car­tog­ra­ph­er going about his busi­ness. A dis­placed and ultra-nation­al­is­tic British offi­cer (played by Sam Spru­ell) has gone a tad Colonel Kurtz from his time in duty.

Plus there’s a bril­liant­ly-chore­o­graphed, but dis­mal­ly depress­ing sequence in which the major­i­ty of an indige­nous tribe are exe­cut­ed as they wake – with a com­plete nega­tion of the hero­ism and der­ring-do that are usu­al­ly char­ac­ter­is­tic of such scenes. Again, this is the west­ern as a dried, cor­us­cat­ing corpse, left out for the buz­zards to feed on.

In the end, Haber­le is inter­est­ed in col­lect­ing up all these exam­ples of colo­nial pil­lage that help build towards an worth­while the­sis, but not, alas, a par­tic­u­lar­ly round­ed dra­ma. A lengthy coda in which we return to the more refined sur­round­ings of the Don, who mus­es on what went on out there under his name, clos­es out the film on a dark whis­per rather than a howl of despair.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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