Film - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

To those who haven’t watched, please check…

 

## How the heroes fail to adapt themselves.

## The roles of the heroes and how the director look at them

 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Directed by George Roy Hill
Produced by John Foreman
Screenplay by      William Goldman
Starring      Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross
Release dates October 24, 1969
Running time 112 minutes
Country United States
Language English

 


This work is one of the best of New Hollywood.
Heroes are two guys who live in old society and the film shows how they struggle against new society.

Butch and Sundance repeatedly commit train robbery to spend all up, and go back to robbery again.
They have some fellows from time to time, but the railway company focuses on these two and hires skillful chasers.  They keep on chasing after Butch and Sundance unerringly.  Both are tormented by their continuous chase, but finally manage to break free.

Butch and Sundance visit Etta, who is a teacher and teach them Spanish, enjoy riding a bicycle and their ephemeral peace, but they decide to run away to Bolivia.
They still commit bank robbery and they are known as notorious.

Two of them, one day, decide to get a “normal” job, not illegal ones as they do, but it turns out in vain as they happen to kill people.  The victims are ordinary people, not police, even though they are bandits.  Butch and Sundance suffer from their sin and their future.
Etta, on the other hand, leaves those two and returns home in America.
Butch and Sundance are chased after by police.

In this work, two heroes are expressed as those who cannot adapt themselves into new society.
There must be many people who lived in crafty lives, maybe not as cunning as those two.  Although their crimes are as big as train robbery, many built their own lives upon illegal deeds.
However, time passes by quickly.

New society heckle free way of living of individual under the name of rules and regulations.  There were many cases that were forgiven, even though quite many are edgy.  New society controls those gray and edgy deeds.  These rules and regs are controls to improve people’s lives, but some could not jump into this new society, such as Butch and Sundance.

In this work, “bicycle” symbolizes the modern society.
Butch seems to ride “bicycle”, but he turns away and two of them decide to continue their way of living.

There is another turning point, which is the time they are employed in Bolivia as guards and kill bandits.
They stick to money and do not choose to run away without it.  However, it is not because of money but their eagerness towards their job.  It is their “normal” job and do not want to leave it.  It is ironical that this event chase them into corner eventually.  Maybe the director wanted to point out they had no choice but destruction.

No matter how they want to have “normal” lives, they seem to lose their way to escape.
It can be said that Butch and Sundance should not have left the “bicycle” first of all.  With “new society” and “bicycle”, they could go with modernization in the US.

Society is always cruel to people who cannot recognize.
Their way is decadent and seems antisocial to anyone.
On the other hand, audience feels something heart-warming to these two.  This is not because how the director led the story as so but also audience has something similar.

Progress of technology is too rapid to deal with and this rapidity changes people’s mind, lose ourselves, clouds our ways and misleads us.  Each of us think “I am different, I can handle”, but still cannot catch the rapidity.  And we all know comfort of old society and this feeling makes us unsettled.
Butch and Sundance are not others, but ourselves.
In addition, “bicycle”, the symbol of “modernization”, has been updated everyday, popping up and disappears immediately.  We do not even know what to ride and are shaken by gadgets and information in modern society.
Audience feels awkward towards these two, but still wants them to survive because they know it is difficult to ride.

Two of them are looking at death and the director seems to have drawn “aestheticism of decadence”.  To those who cannot adapt themselves to modernization, he wanted to have an impressive last moment.
Riding “bicycle” is essential to anyone, but some might recognize they cannot ride anymore.  There are too many of them to ride and impossible to adapt themselves to all.
There must be a final somewhere sometime.
Some might think leaving “bicycles” for younger ones and retire themselves.
Butch and Sundance head for decadence and audience are moved by their somewhat graceful finale.  But there is no such a moment in real life.
All of us have to keep on thinking when and how to retire.

There is another point to consider about “bicycle”.  Sundance should be the one who to ride, not Butch, since Etta is a girlfriend of Sundance.  It should be Sundance and Etta in this sense.
However, Butch rides “bicycle” in the film.

Their positions are clear from the beginning.  Butch is older and intelligent, Sundance is a master of quick shot, in other words, a fighter.  The director’s intention seems that physical interrogation or weapon is no use in new society, and intelligence would take place.
However, even Butch throws away the “bicycle” and it indicates ironical story and difficulty in modern society.  It may be an emphasis by director that people need to confront and skill in order to read what is going on in new society otherwise they cannot live anymore.

Not only the director’s attitudes towards both two but action by Ne�-man and unknown Redford of that time are attractive.  This is a film with strong message today.

*New Hollywood
Films made from the middle of Vietnam War and by the end of the war.  In comparison to the mainstream of American films that ended with hopes and better expectations, New Hollywood films were based on irrational and absurd storyboards.  This is off-spring from hippy culture and total realism is pursued in impoverished America after the war.