“I’d shot every kind of firearm there is by the time I was 12,” are the first words uttered in Jethro Waters’ narrative feature debut Gunfighter Paradise, spoken in a voiceover (that will continue intermittently throughout the film) from protagonist Stoner (Braz Cubas) as he appears in wide shot walking across an autumnal field. These are not, however, the film’s first words, as they follow a text quote from Mark Twain about man being the ‘only Religious Animal’ (“He is the only animal that loves his neighbour as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight”). These two opening quotes, one written, the other spoken, merge two of the bedrocks of American culture – guns and religion – which, combustible enough in their own right, can, when mixed together, form an even more explosive brew. The film’s very title involves a similar juxtaposition of firearms and faith.
Stoner certainly combines guns and religion. The son of a gunsmith and Vietnam veteran, he is surrounded by firearms, from handguns to a sniper’s rifle to ‘some Terminator shotgun’; and as we see him at a work desk painstakingly filling bullet casings with gunpowder for all of these, we hear him say in voiceover, “I always assumed I had a specific destiny,” and speak of hearing God himself (voiced by Bryan Black) tell him to “take care of business.” Stoner does not seem well – and it is not just the green and black camo paint that he has constantly smeared across his face, or the black shooting gloves that he is always wearing. Stoner appears to be a coiled spring and a ticking time bomb, just waiting for his supposed divine destiny to manifest itself while holed up in the rural North Carolina home to which he has returned after his mother (voiced by Jessica Hecht) recently died, leaving the place to him. Or maybe Stoner is just preparing himself for the coming apocalypse.
Other people notice that things are not right with Stoner. “You ok?”, asks one (Michael Kraft) of the two men – dressed as Confederate soldiers for a reenactment – who have become lost and ended up in the house waiting for a ride. This one regards this kind of cosplay as akin to the D&D games that he regularly plays, and happily dresses as either Confederate or Unionist according to the needs of the exercise, whereas his comrade (Rob Hinkle) has ancestors who were actual Confederate soldiers, and says he could never countenance playing for the other side. Either way, these two men show that America’s divisions over faith and the gun extend way back in time, even if their rifles, much to Stoner’s disappointment, are loaded only with blanks. “Are you doing ok?” Stoner’s old friend turned family man Joel (Joel Loftin) will similarly ask him, just after Stoner, himself in so much camouflage that Joel did not at first recognise him, has observed that those Confederate soldiers have “got to be a tad nuts to be dressing like that.” Even the young Son (Pate Leatherman) of the Neighbour (Christopher Levoy Bower), come to invite Stoner to a church lunch, takes one look at Stoner and asks, “Are you alright?”, adding, “You seem kinda – I dunno.” Joel advises Stoner to go for a checkup with his doctor, while Stoner’s own semi-estranged Brother (Valient Himself) suggests he see a psychic.
The pathology on display here is evidently not Stoner’s alone. When he and Joel go for a drive to pick up a free couch, on the way they pass one man (Kyle Lewis) guarding his property with a huge gun, another (Richard Buff) carrying a sword, and a third (Chris Crumley) geared up in full hazmat suit. It is as though whatever malaise is afflicting Stoner is shared in a broader male populace, in a South where fathers are expected to teach their sons to use guns, to hunt and to become stone-cold killers, as Stoner’s father (Alan Waters, who I am guessing is the filmmaker’s own father) did for him.
Yet even though Stoner has been formed in part by his relationship with his father and with God, he is also influenced by his mother, and for all his brooding masculinity, comes with a decidedly feminine side. As Gunfighter Paradise goes on, we learn more about this extraordinary woman who liked puzzles, poetry and the play of words. “Even if it didn’t seem like it, everything was planned, it all had its place,” Stoner’s Brother says of their late mother – and she has left behind a trail of hints, clues and items which make her appear, like an omniscient, providential God (or at least like screenwriter Waters), to be – even post mortem – several steps ahead of whatever strange drama is unfolding on her one-time home. Stoner is a product of both his father and his mother, and from the latter, we suspect, he gets his calmness, his curiosity and his poetic way with words. He may at first seem like a well-armed man about to go postal, but really much of what ails him is grief for his mother’s loss – and she has even left him enigmatic instructions to help him work through that.
Meanwhile, Stoner also has in his possession a mysterious green case, entrusted to him by his unsavoury Uncle Dean (Burk Uzzle). Its contents are drawing in another killer, Maurice (Alex McWalters). An eventual armed confrontation between Stoner and the knife-wielding Maurice is inevitable, but when it finally comes, orchestrated to a soundtrack of Spanish guitar and whistles to underscore its inherited place in the oater tradition, it is played out in a subdued manner and mostly off screen. For Waters seems less interested in the mechanics and dynamics of America’s long tradition of violence than in its futile, tragic impact and repercussions.
Not just writing and directing, but also shooting, editing and producing, Waters comes with an auteur’s singularity of vision, and so Gunfighter Paradise draws out the paradoxes of a polarised America in an unusual and often abstract way. Here rugged individualists pass down their poisonous fixations to the next generation, and are polarised along both political and religious lines that keep resurfacing for reenactment. Here disputes and schisms are viciously carried out against the backdrop of the Stars and Stripes (and the Gadsen flag) to mark their part in the national character. Here the hallucinatory and the oneiric sit alongside contemporary naturalism. Here a mummified cat, a chameleon, a burning table and an updated Arthurian Lady of the Lake (Haley Nocik) form part of the mythic mise en scène. And here God, if (s)he even exists, moves in mysterious ways. It is a strange homecoming parable, emerging like Stoner himself out of left field to take well-armed shots at the conflicted, contradictory state of the nation. There is nothing else like it, and while the cinematography is certainly beautiful, this is much more than just a pretty picture.
strap: Out of left field: Jethro Waters’ narrative feature debut sets a grieving man’s homecoming amid a singularly American mix of guns and God
© Anton Bitel
