After 36 years, Kevin Costner is finally ready to give us his thesis on America.
“Sometimes, you know, things take their time,” Mr. Costner said in an interview with America. “No matter how hard I pushed, it wasn’t going to happen.”
He is talking about “Horizon: An American Saga,” which premieres in theaters this week. Mr. Costner has long been interested in telling a holistic story of the West through the lens of a single town blown up to epic scale, from the first stake in the ground to the trials and tribulations it must face to succeed.
“The majority of westerns, almost all of them already have a town in place,” Mr. Costner said. He wanted to tell the story of how a quintessentially western town came to be.
Mr. Costner first started developing the idea in 1988 and began pursuing its production in 2003, after the success of his film “Open Range.” However, studios balked at the idea of funding what Costner originally pitched as a trilogy. In the two decades since, the idea has grown. “Horizon” is the first in a four-film saga; the second chapter is set for release later this summer, with the third and final segments still in active production.
The film has a quasi-anthology format, split between separate but interconnected plotlines all happening simultaneously. Set during the Civil War, it follows a group of settlers who come into conflict with Native Americans; a convoy of dysfunctional travelers; an old gunman protecting a child from kidnappers; and some shorter stories in between. The characters in all these stories, it seems, are hurtling toward Horizon, a promised land of sorts where they can escape from their old lives and build new ones—but not without complication.
Mr. Costner’s love for the project is evident, as if this is his ultimate destiny as a filmmaker. When studios would not fund it, he decided to pay for much of it himself. He has funneled $38 million of his own money to it, with investors contributing the rest of the project’s $100 million budget. For Mr. Costner, there never seemed to be an alternative to getting the movie made. He refused to abandon “Horizon.”
“I’m a person that just tries to push things on my own through a force of will,” he explained. “I have considerable luck doing that. I don’t get everything I want in life…but I never gave up on this story. I let it lay, but then I would come back to it.”
Faith, as well, seemed crucial to the production process.
“This has been a long time coming for me,” he said. “I thought I was ready in 1988. I thought I was ready in 2003. I thought I was ready five years ago. But everything [happens] in its own time. I do feel blessed. I do feel like there’s been hands over my life. And this is coming out, I have to admit, when it’s supposed to.”
“I asked God for two things in my life,” he said. The first was that he would live long enough to be able to give his children, some of whom are still in high school, a solid enough foundation to get a good start in life. The second was to find work that he wanted to do, and “Horizon” is at the top of that list.
“Horizon” tells an origin story of the West.
“There were these first moments,” he said, “when someone looked at the same valley that other people have been staring at for thousands of years [and said] ‘This is where we build, this is what we should do.’ And in doing so, we disrupted the lives of people who have been there for thousands of years…. Every place in America was fought over, was contested.”
Mr. Costner has a long history of dealing with issues involving Native Americans in his films. His directorial debut, “Dances with Wolves,” which won seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, covered the story of a Union Army lieutenant (played by Mr. Costner) who ingratiates himself with a Lakota tribe. Praised in its time, the film has come under criticism in the intervening years for having something of a “white savior” narrative.
“Horizon” feels opposed to the idea of a white savior. The Native Americans are a fierce force that summon the collective anger of hundreds of years of colonization, unleashing wrath upon a group of settlers for seizing the land that had been sacred to them for generations. After this incident, the Native Americans are hunted down by bounty hunters, and so hurt begets hurt.
This theme of generational trauma, the cycle of violence, was important to Mr. Costner. “For me, you can’t have winners and losers,” he said. “The Native Americans lost so much. But it doesn’t mean their story, their fight for it, can be negated or even forgotten. There’s a lot of humanity on both sides. You cannot leave out people who are part of the story.”
Division is another theme Mr. Costner chose to explore. The Native American characters are split between wanting to seek revenge against the invading settlers and deciding to simply let them be, for fear of reprisal. The white settlers are also split: Should this place be left alone, or is the march toward Manifest Destiny inevitable no matter how much blood and sweat it costs? The town of Horizon will be built on two central lies: that this land is worth claiming and that it can be claimed peacefully.
As it was back then, so it is now. “Horizon” is set during the Civil War, and it is meaningful that it is being released during another time of great division in American life. Mr. Costner has no love for division and deceit in our political discourse.
“We really have to become more involved in our politics, more involved in how our country works, more aware of the people that are falling through the cracks,” he said. “[We have to be] more aware of common sense and less aware of our careers, meaning politicians can’t be more concerned about their electability than the job at hand.”
It is clear that Mr. Costner harbors a great love for America. It certainly comes out in the ideas presented in the film, but it also comes out in the way the film looks. Shot on location mostly in Utah, “Horizon” uses the state’s diverse geography to represent everything from the cold mountains of Montana to the dusty mesas of the Southwest. The film is beautifully presented, shot in a cool, steely way that harkens back to ’80s and ’90s American cinema, not unlike Mr. Costner’s own “Dances With Wolves” or Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven.” A combination of shooting on location and practical effects gives it an old-school feel. It was crucial to Mr. Costner that everything be shot as traditionally as possible.
“There’s nothing like the land being a character,” he said. “It informs the acting [and] that informs the story, it informs the people watching. These places exist, and it wasn’t enough for me to just kind of electronically make it seem like you were there. It was important to me, I felt in telling the story, to be there.”
Mr. Costner wants to wow people. He wants them to celebrate America.
“What do you want people to take away [from a film]?” he asked. “First, you want them to feel like they got their money’s worth. More importantly, that they saw something and felt something they never quite imagined.”
“Horizon: An American Saga–Chapter One” will be released in theaters on June 28, followed by “Chapter Two,” which comes out on Aug. 16.
