Director: Deborah Correa
Writer: Ron Yungul
Stars: Damian Conrad-Davis, Sam Bullington, Wayne Charles Baker
Synopsis: April 1862, set in Arizona territory during the opening months of the American Civil War, The War Between, is about two enemy soldiers who must cooperate in order to survive being stranded in the Sonoran Desert.
When we think about the “Wild West” we often imagine it after the Civil War. We think of outlaws, cowboys, lawmen, and frontier cavalry outposts. We think of mining towns, brothels, bullets, and booze. Yet, the period of westward expansion began before the tensions between the North and the South erupted. Because of the rapid expansion of people and policies into these new territories, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in 1854, created a quagmire as it brought the idea of popular sovereignty to these new frontiers. Popular sovereignty meant the residents of these territories could decide for themselves whether or not they would own slaves.
This is what the film The War Between sets up. Two soldiers on opposite sides of the Civil War are brought into close quarters in the New Mexico Territory, in what we now call Arizona. This wasn’t the same kind of pitched battles happening in the east, but battles fought by people from the frontier who had fought and learned tactics from the Native tribes these men had driven off their ancestral lands. These men are more survivalists than soldiers. The truce between these two men exists solely to ensure survival, in spite of their warring philosophies.
The War Between toes that line of Israel Terry’s (Damian Conrad-Davis) belief in preserving the union and Moses Jennings’ (Sam Bullington) belief that the secession was justified so that the Southern way of life could be maintained. Ron Yungul’s script is not about black and white, but awash in the complicated grayness of people. Jennings’ staunch understanding that slavery is necessary is also friendly and respectful of the traditions and personhood of Great Seer (Wayne Charles Baker), an Apache the soldiers meet on their road. Terry, while never claiming to be, and balking at the term, abolitionist, freed and befriended his father’s slave Atticus (Tank Jones). At the same time, he is also vehemently against keeping Great Seer alive and dehumanizes him with harsh racial epithets.
This liminal state bucks the trends of the traditional Western. There isn’t a throughline of moral righteousness because neither man can hope to achieve such an ideal. Both men are inherently flawed, which is not what myth of the West classic Westerns force-fed us.
The War Between also doesn’t look like a traditional Western. Director Deborah Correa and cinematographer Even Jake Cohen create scenes that look more like they’re out of a Terrence Malick film than the grand vistas and horseback chases of John Ford. The West of The War Between is as sparse as the actual West, not the Hollywood version of the West. If there are other people, they’re antagonists or, barring animosity, obstacles to getting back to something like civilization. The filmmakers utilize the rocky and unforgiving landscape to great effect especially as we know it will take so much longer for these men to reach a populated area on foot.
If The War Between has a detriment it’s that while it’s meant to be a balanced portrait of these two men, there is far more interest in one over the other. Our focal character, Terry, has a significant backstory that barely explains why he’s out in the desert attempting to make it back home. On the other hand, Jennings has much more than mere backstory. He has a point of view and a thoughtful nature. It makes it hard to want to keep up with Terry at all or care about his wife waiting back home. It makes it all the more difficult as Jennings is a believer in the necessity of the reprehensible practice of slavery.
The War Between is a sparsely populated, but thoughtful Western. There are elements that make us hope this film can usher in a much more nuanced portrait of the West than what Hollywood spoon-fed us in the early 20th century. The characters are rich and the setting is harsh. It’s a film that breaks out of a mold and forms its own mythos in the best way.
