A Year of Film History Challenge
(watching a little bit of film history month by month, decade by decade)
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By the time Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was released a lot of the longtime shine of the Western genre had worn off and audience appetites were clearly changing. What could a tale of two cowboys offer that was of relevance to hip & groovy viewers back in 1969? Quite a lot, actually.

Despite their status as gunslinging outlaws of the Old West, there's much about Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) that really calls out to the spirit of the sixties: The deep anti-authority nature of the two. The constantly chasing after freedom. The streak of pranksterism. The empathy, the gentleness (and in a Western!), the simple appreciation for the beauty of this world that pops up in sequences like the 'Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head' musical interlude. Every time this movie starts to get to Western-y, it starts to fall back on Burt Bacharach.

The whole film seems to be having a poke at the idea of the aging Western genre, in addition to its more obvious front-and-center commentary on aging in general. The whole notion that "in trying to avoid capture by a pursuing posse Butch and Sundance are really just trying to out run death itself" may not be presented very subtly (I mean a cop in the movie comes out and basically says as much) but I still really liked the way director George Roy Hill chose to approach that idea, and how important the friendship of the two main characters becomes in dealing with that.

It may be a bit of a cop-out to say this about two characters whose lives have obviously revolved around violence to a great degree but yes, it really does seem that they tried to to avoid harming innocents... violence in this movie often comes with a thud or a bang maybe, but death itself is given a sense of smothering permanence. Loss of life is the penalty Butch and Sundance know they must ultimately pay for all the freedom they've enjoyed, and the only thing that makes it okay is that they're in it together.

The charisma and chemistry of Newman and Redford is just undeniable, and the film really does turn into quite the portrait of friendship. Some viewers have insisted on reading a gay subtext into their relationship, and while I don't deny it's a possibility here, I feel like insisting on one label or one reading of what they mean to each other is kind of missing the point of what these two guys were all about. They'll always be freer than that.

I loved this vital character study of two longtime associates set against a desolate outdoor background, framed with that familiar misty panoramic cinematography. It calls back to similar films of its genre but takes us somewhere entirely new at the time. The script by William Goldman (The Princess Bride) gives us so much great dialogue, and the career-defining performances by Newman and Redford do an excellent job of delivering it. And while he doesn't exactly represent my favorite category of music, I even enjoyed the Bacharach soundtrack. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid turned out to be one of the most moving portraits of friendship I've ever seen, taking us places both laugh-out-loud funny and bittersweet, and I'm glad that after years of seeing parts of it I finally gave it a go from beginning to end. Definitely worth the watch.