‘Longmire,’ the Zen Western

By ROB PATTERSON

It’s hard to deny just how central the Western movies and TV series have been to filmed entertainment even if what’s currently being made and shown doesn’t really reflect its primacy. Which in a way has made my enjoyment of the Netflix series “Longmire” that much more rewarding.

Growing up in the center of the post-World War II baby boom, being born in 1964, the old West was all over TV in shows like “Gunsmoke,” “Wyatt Earp,” “Bonanza” and “Maverick” and the movies in my youth. But as popular culture shifted in the 1970s, the Western fell out of contemporary favor. It also started getting adapted to suit the tenor of the times, although due credit must be given cinematically to Clint Eastwood for keeping that classic Western film mode alive at a high level of quality.

I remain a fan of the old-school Western even if, truth be told, the “wild” West many of them depicted is an exaggeration, a conflation of the mythology. Yet there’s still something good to be said about old school rugged individualism lived outside the urban confines of how most of us Americans live today. And that’s an aspect of what’s known as the Western that “Longmire” gets right.

I’d spotted the series on Netflix and was tempted for some time to check it out. Yet I was also feeling a reluctance to do so because of the ways in which postmodernism has sometimes affected contemporary Westerns, occasionally for the better but too often for the worse. (The flipside of such misgivings is also why I have up to now avoided HBO’s “Westworld” series even if I know there’s about as much chance I may like it as not.)

But once I watched the first episode of “Longmire” I was happily hooked. And a big reason why was its main character – Sheriff Walt Longmire, who serves in a rural Wyoming county – and the talented Australian actor who plays him, Robert Taylor. In the old-school Western mode one could describe him as a “strong, silent type,” a la Gary Cooper. A more accurate description might be that Longmire’s a man of few words, and that his strength is certainly being tested by the recent passing of his wife.

Which is to say that there’s both a depth of emotion and character there that makes for a compelling lead role, which Taylor seems to seamlessly embody. It also has a strong secondary best-buddy role that allows onetime brat-packer Lou Diamond Phillips to display some appealing actigng chops in his maturity.

One could almost say that rural Wyoming plays in a way a character in this series. And one true aspect of the old West that remains a powerful real-life dramatic factor is the Indians of a nearby reservation and the residual conflict with whites that still remains today.

Yeah, there’s action and gunplay like one might expect from a Western. But it unfolds in a subtle near-Zen fashion as much as simply an aspect of the setting. In fact, there’s an appealingly low-key tone to how all the stories of the episodes unfold, giving the series a potent real-life resonance.

It was first launched on A&E, inspired by Longmire mystery novels I may well dip into in the future, to strong ratings yet not renewed after three seasons. Netflix picked it up for three more seasons.

To me “Longmire” isn’t a series one binges on. It feels instead like a well-done reliable offering to be enjoyed as part of one’s regular viewing over time. I’m both enjoying the show and admiring its lack of flash, cleverness and contemporary cynicism and irony. You may too.

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Documentary Film: “Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives” – The esteemed talent scout/music producer John Hammond once told me that the ego of record mogul Clive Davis is “unfathomable.” If you can stomach that quality, this look at all the talents that the surprisingly long-surviving music executive and his ear for it songs can’t help but be impressive.

Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2020

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