Western Opening Sequence Analysis - Hostiles

Western Opening Sequence Analysis - Hostiles

Year released: 2017

Director: Scott Cooper

Studio: Grisbi productions and Waypoint entertainment

Top Billed Cast: Scott Shepard, Rosamund Pike, Ava Cooper  

The genre of 'Hostiles' is a Western, this can be seen in the opening sequence of the use of the convention of 'good people' vs 'bad people', this can be seen with the use of high angle shots on the family and low angle shots on the 'invaders', this connotes that the invaders have grasp of power over the family who are helpless who are in an home invasion esc situation.

The tone of the opening scene is helpless because when the family try to get away you can see they have no real chance of completely escaping the invaders, this can be seen especially when the father who has a gun is shot down and killed which implies that the families lifeline has gone since the father having the gun was their only real chance of escaping, The mid shot of the father getting sliced by the knife is almost
monumental of the idea that it over especially in the barren landscape where you can be seen easily when running and can easily be picked off by the invaders one by one like its an archery game to them; this further suggests their immense power.

The audience is engaged by the hiding of the mother who hides under a rock in the woods with her baby in order to hide from the invaders, the subtle parallel non-diegetic soundtrack enhances this scene perfectly by projecting the feeling of suspense to the audience who would be gripped to see if the mother can survive the encounter successfully; however the mother does survive the encounter providing some light in this dark scene of despair.

The character of the father is presented as a proud patriarchal figure because he sacrifices his life to protect his family from the invaders, this makes him appear heroic for doing this but what he did only bought the rest of the family a little more time to escape, but it didn't help them that much since the rest of the family were easily presuited by the invaders. The mother is presented as protective and loving ,(both the mother and father adhering to stereotypical nurturing and protective roles respectively), but also shown as smart since she outsmarted the invaders by hiding successfully when the especated narrative route would be just to her be found and killed; all of this creates a sympathetic bond between the audience and mother. 

The invaders are presented as evil invaders in the clip in the way they absolutely slaughter most of the family without showing any mercy; and their tribal paint makes them appear further threatening to the audience. However we do not know why they killed the family but there may be a different reason to way they came, they may have been provoked or finalised by people since their costume is 'scary' to western audiences yet they look traditional, possibly even native americans if we follow the trope of the western film convention, but not everything is how it may seem on the surface.

Based on the whole opening sequence I think the narrative will follow the mother and how she will cope with the trauma of witnessing her family be murdered, it may also follow weather she will seek to avenge her family and fight back? Hopefully the narrative will provide the audience with mor backstory on the family and 'invaders' to underlying causes of this event or more events out there possibly like this. I feel this sequence was successful in portraying suspense and gripping the audience attention but lacked some needed depth to who the family is, what they did and any of their individual personalities as opposed to cardboard cutout stereotypes.