With the upcoming release of the Criterion Collection Sidney Poitierbrilliant western Buck and the Preacher, it is important to recognize the revolutionary revision in the film of both the western genre and the black exploitation cycle of the 70s. The focus is on a stormy journey in a van led by an award-winning duo. Buck and the Preacher weaves the story of the post-Civil War exodus movement from south to west after the abolition of slavery into a highly structured Western adventure story.
By depicting in the film the camaraderie between the central group of black migrants and the Indian communities along the trail, Poitier diverts the Western from the realm of Manifest Destiny fantasy narrative by emphasizing the systematic emergence of racial oppression during the Reconstruction era. West. Furthermore, Buck and the PreacherThe rejection of screen-centric stereotypes that permeated blaxploitation cinema around the same time elevates Poitiers’ film as a triumphant celebration of black culture and history both on and off camera. Among other things, Poitier’s towering central performance as Buck and Harry Belafonte as the Preacher reinforces specific revisionist tendencies Buck and the Preacherhighlighting his unique and influential place in the history of American Westerns.
From the enthusiastic trills of a jazz legend Benny CarterLip Harp for introducing the traveling community to the final freeze frame of the protagonists and Ruby DeeRuth rides towards sunset Buck and the Preacher immediately positions itself as a backdrop for disillusioned Western friends of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Confluence of common anxiety wild bunch with light-hearted humor and reckless recklessness Butch Cassidy and the Sundance KidPoitier imbues his Reconstruction wagon western with a sense of New Hollywood fascination without sacrificing the historical impact of his post-emancipation narrative. While Poitier’s colleagues viewed the genre as a method of dealing with contemporary social problems and political disenfranchisement, Buck and the Preacher simultaneously grapples with the painful past that black communities have faced in their travels from the southern United States and comments on the persistence of systemic racism in the post-Civil Rights era. Boldly blending historical responsibility with contemporary social criticism, Poitier makes his Western masterpiece both a time capsule and a timeless adventure, flowing smoothly between entertaining genre shoot-outs and heists and prescient commentary on undermining racist systems by all means necessary.
In fact, one of the most attractive thematic themes in all Buck and the Preacher it is the poetic use of the antics of the action to embody the political revolution at the heart of the film. From a tragic ambush at a wagon camp by a group of white raiders to the central scene of an elegantly executed bank robbery by the titular duo, Poitier deftly turns narrative control on a pendulum throughout the film, which effectively maintains tension and emotionally explores events. the historical struggle faced by the “originals” on the way to post-war freedom. Combined with the poetic use of action throughout the journey to the west, Poitier boldly avoids dialogue in several of its most important scenes, including the aforementioned bank robbery and much of the bravura finale, focusing on the atmospheric drone of Carter’s musical score. Instead of filling the film’s soundscape with the manly babble that defined Western careers John Wayne as well as Clint Eastwood, Poitier puts physical strength and quick intelligence above the genre’s typical masculine posture. Redefining both racial politics and the patriarchal performativity of the Western genre through an alternative use of action, Buck and the Preacher brilliantly transcends the trappings that make many Western classics dubious relics.
In addition to Poitier’s repoliticization of the Western as a post-civil rights text, Buck and the Preacher equally shatters the stereotypical flaws that permeated many of Blaxploitation’s hits of the same decade. Even how Buck and the Preacher engaged in similar Robin Hood”eat rich” style storytelling, like in films like super fly and especially Cotton comes to HarlemPoitier’s position of the characters in the post-Civil War setting distances the figures from the more modern stereotypes that are often imposed on black protagonists. By imagining Buck Poitier as the stoic and unwavering hero of the classic western, and Belafonte the Preacher as a complex and cunning crook seeking retribution, Poitier and his screenwriter Ernest Quinoy dive into the deep well of Western archetypes to demythologize the whitewashing of the West, rather than apply negative stereotypes in the context of a given period. In addition, Poitier connects the film emotionally with Ruth, played by Ruby Dee, through her important role in running the train and her power to withstand Buck’s vulnerabilities along the way. By emphasizing Ruth’s strength and determination along with the main characters, Poitier contributes to an unprecedented representation of black femininity in his post-war western.
In the end, Buck and the Preacher functions as a vision of racial and cultural unity, culminating in the triumphant destruction of the plantation-owning raiders by a gang of protagonists made up of black fighters and Native American warriors. By portraying groups of people usually oppressed in Western cinema as victorious subversives of the genre’s traditional heroes, Poitier reverses the notion of the American West as a racially and culturally homogenous space. Instead of ending with a long shot, watching the heroes drive off into the sunset, Buck and the Preacher flips the camera to look at the titular duo as they drive towards the audience, implying that the path to racial equality and the decolonization of the American narrative continues.
Although the conclusion about Buck and the Preacher retains its power as an important statement of black heroism, as well as a positive racial and historical representation in the present day, the immediate impact that Poitier’s film had on black filmmaking in the 1970s must be recognized. Two years after the film’s release Gordon Parks Jr. proposed two similar exercises in subversive storytelling: the western set in the 1910s. Thomasin and Bushrod and a buddy-focused political conspiracy thriller Three hard way. Drawing in general, tonally and even aesthetically from Buck and the Preacherboth films served as further stepping stones in the black filmmakers’ pursuit of revisionist genre films, pointing to the sociocultural strength and cinematic prowess of Poitiers’ western opus.
Source: Collider
