The Horsemen

Omar Sharif and Jack Palance may be the only names in this cast that most will recognize but the story based on an Afghan tale, set in Afghanistan before the Russian invasion, is a classic tale which lays out a great deal of Afghan culture during the period before the great disruption by the West. Afghanistan returned to the public eye after the post-911 invasion to depose the Taliban but the state of knowledge about these marvelous independent people who fought the British Empire to a standstill, still remains obscure. The game of buzgashi, a kind of polo for Weidman, was the core for many of the tribesmen. Its importance as an institution marking the status of tribes and individuals has no real counterpart in Western culture, and this is a tale of intrigue and self-learning, framed in a cultural setting we still have yet to understand.

Reportedly, John Frankenheimer bugged out of the post-production process of I Walk the Line as fast as possible to get to Afghanistan to film this. Also, Columbia went through a regime change and the budget on the film got slashed in the middle of things, necessitating the change from filming in 65mm to 35mm. And...it's kind of dull. Again. Just like The Fixer. Another prestige literary adaptation that has no real energy to it, The Horsemen isn't a complete failure of a film. It's just not as interesting as it should have been.

Uraz (Omar Sharif) is the son of Tursen (Jack Palance), a rich man and famous chapandaz, a rider in the game called buzkashi where a group of individual horsemen wrangle for a sheep's carcass to throw into a painted circle on the ground. It's apparently very big in Afghanistan. Anyway, the heart of the film is the father/son dynamic of Uraz feeling unworthy to live up to his father's expectations, made all the worse when Tursen gives Uraz his horse for a big buzkashi contest where Uraz gets thrown from the saddle and breaks his leg. He then must make a long journey, choosing to take the hard, ancient road, to prove his worth. Along for the ride are his servant, Hayatal (Peter Jeffrey), and the untouchable prostitute, Zareh (Leigh Taylor-Young).

Where this film is easily the most interesting is a look at rural Afghanistan, their customs, sports, and the landscape. I mean, I'd seen the use of a head in a sack for polo in The Man Who Would be King, but never the wrangling of a goat carcass for sport. The portrayal of traditional Afghani masculinity is also interesting through Uraz who has a deep distrust of modern medicine. When he wakes up from the accident on the buzkashi pitch, his leg is wrapped up in a white cast. How can his leg heal without the sun hitting it? So, he has Hayatal break it off and wraps up his wound with a page from the Koran because the Prophet's words should heal him. It, of course, does not work, and the film has this kind of detached, sympathetic view to a backwards man trying to make his way across a hostile landscape.

It's not that hostile, though. The travelogue aspects kind of wear out their welcome after a while with little to add after the first half hour or so. Instead, we get some character-based stuff around Uraz naming Hayatal as the heir to his horse should something happen to him, a background thing between Hayatal and Zareh that could be a romance, a ram fight they come across where Uraz bets on an underdog, and even looks back to Tursen trying to recreate a moment from his youth by trying to jump onto a small building with his horse, something he did in a buzkashi contest many years prior.

It's just...not that interesting. And, again, like in The Fixer, I think a large part of it is how lackadaisical the film is edited. There's no real drive. It's just kind of a journey across a baren wasteland as Uraz gets steadily sicker because he refused Western treatment of his broken leg. It's just not that engaging of a journey. There's added interest late in the film when he has to make a drastic decision to save his life, something that should make it pretty much impossible for him to expertly ride a horse ever again. Which he, of course, does.

I mean...it's fine. After the look at Afghanistan loses interest, there's not a whole lot else. Uraz's daddy issues actually get sidetracked for watching ram fights and dealing with subdued feelings for an untouchable prostitute. The tension around Hayatal trying to kill him for the horse kind of comes out of nowhere. When Uraz does finally get back to Tursen, having grown through his pain and loss, there's something to it. It's not deeply affecting or anything, but it makes sense. Enough connections have been made through the film for it to make sense on an intellectual level.

I think part of the disconnect though, is performance based. Jack Palance was not a bad actor (and I generally don't care about brown face stuff), but he trended very easily towards arch performances, and I think his performance as Sharif's father, aside from the fact that his old-age makeup is unconvincing and they look the same age, is too arch for this film which is generally more restrained (too restrained, to be honest). A big performance wouldn't be bad, but he just...doesn't fit.

So, this feels like another attempt by Frankenheimer to adapt literature handsomely. It's also another tail of self-destruction, though with a more hopeful ending than most. It fits his filmography and shows a certain ambition, but it also demonstrates how he could easily be lost in types of films he wasn't familiar with.

This is an example of taking a book and adapting it to the large screen and realising with hindsight that it works better as a book . I'm not familiar with Joseph Kessel's original novel but the comments on this page state that the film is very faithful to the book and that might be the problem . It's a story that concentrates on obsession at winning at all costs and Uraz the protagonist is a universal metaphor for all mankind that when you want to win something it can cost you very dearly

You can perhaps see why the producers thought this would make a great film with its exotic locations and the fact it was st in Afghanistan before the land reforms the mid 1970s that led to civil war and the subsequent Soviet intervention is what made me seek out the film if only to understand Afghan culture better and the film does contain an intelligent opening when the audience are led to believe they're watching a scene from the 17th Century only to the Afghan rug pulled from under their feet as a jet plane screams over head . Likewise there's some spectacular scenes involving the sport of buzkashi where horsemen literally fight over the carcass of a dead goat and there's some impressive cinematography featuring the Afghan landscape but the inherent problem with the film is the character driven narrative which doesn't kindly lend itself to the medium of cinema

With a writer like Trumbo (who also did one of the best anti war movies of all time :"Johnny got his gun" )and a director like Frankenheimer ("the Manchurian candidate " "seconds" "birdman from Alcatraz" ,how could you be wrong?Add Omar Shariff and Jack Palance.Plus the marvelous wild landscapes .And the magic of these Asian nights.And however it does not quite make it.The slow-moving story is sometimes boring ,in spite of the talent of the actors (and the horses who play a prominent part ,check the title).The magnificence of the settings makes up for it but make sure you see it on a wide screen in a movie theater.Much of its appeal is inevitably lost on a tiny TV screen.

Not having seen this film since its initial release, I have vague moments of recollection (I was eleven at the time) but, after all these years, I still remember this film, a few scenes-even the theater where I saw it-so that has to count for something. We, my parents, and myself went to many, many movies so it was not unusual for me to come along, even at decidedly adult fair such as this. My mother had a crush on Omar-notwithstanding that they share the same passion for bridge. Frankenheimer had a good reputation for producing and directing interesting, offbeat films that hit as often as they miss-The Manchurian Candidate, Grand Prix, and Black Sunday come to mind. So, we gave this film a shot.

While I do not remember the plotline to any great extent, what I do remember quite vividly was that this film took place in Afghanistan, and features quite prominently the national sport of Buzkashi-a sport whereby riders on horses attempt to deposit the carcass of a lamb in a circle. Also, this has what is quite honestly the best performance in a film by Omar Sharif you will ever find. He plays a great rider who is injured early in the film. He broads about a lot but finally finds redemption by returning to the sport that nearly killed him for that one last ride. I do not remember if he makes it through alive.

Buzkashi is an old, old brutal sport/ritual full of tradition and ceremony. The film took great pains to present this dying spectacle as realistically as possible and is the great set piece to the film. A true Man's man sport, it is not for the fainthearted. For me, at eleven, I was not used to cinematic `realism' even though by then I had seen hundreds of films. Perhaps it is why I remember it so for it made quite an impression.

The film was transferred to video but is long out of print and only available through collectors. It has not made it to DVD, unfortunately. I have not seen it since it initial release.

Still, in a long career for Frankenheimer, this is a film that should not be forgotten and is probably one of his best.