Missed Opportunity: Why Kevin Costner’s ‘Horizon: An American Saga’ Should’ve Been Your Next TV Obsession!

For those who were concerned that “Megalopolis” would be the lone audacious, high-budget later-in-life masterpiece from an esteemed Hollywood figure to debut at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, rest assured. Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” (with three more parts promised) has your back.

The Oscar-winning star of “Dances With Wolves,” who is also directing his fourth film, arrived at the Cannes premiere of his film on Sunday, calm and composed, wearing sunglasses, a subtle grin and a well-trimmed mustache. However, by the time he received the prolonged standing ovation from the audience at the gala, Costner was noticeably touched.

“I apologize for making you applaud for such a long time before I realized I should say something,” he said after the applause died down, at the Grand Lumière Theatre. “I believe films are not about their opening weekends. They are about their lifespan. About how often you’re willing to share it. And I hope you will share this film with your loved ones, with your kids. I feel incredibly fortunate. I feel greatly blessed. And there are three more parts to come.”

After viewing the first chapter of “Horizon,” which hits U.S cinemas on June 28, deputy entertainment and arts editor Matt Brennan and film editor Joshua Rothkopf attempted to dissect it. Their conversation is detailed below.

Matt Brennan: Josh, if the old saying about “one for you, one for them” still applies, then “Horizon,” the four-part western that succeeded (and eventually clashed with) Costner’s hit TV series “Yellowstone,” is a project he’s been building the financial and reputational capital to create for an entire Hollywood career. And he certainly puts that capital to use.

The first chapter alone is three hours long, featuring plots set in the Arizona desert, the Rocky Mountains, and the plains of western Kansas. With a multitude of characters, “Horizon” matches Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” in terms of ambitious (mad?) scope, from a logistics perspective if not formally. Unlike many recent films, TV shows, and beach reads that use the term “American” as a marketing strategy, “An American Saga” here truly encapsulates Costner’s vision, covering Native Americans, the pioneers who displace them, the Union soldiers who guard them, the outlaws who exploit them, and the Black, Mexican and Chinese laborers whose work was essential to the American story.

All these groups are heading toward the town of Horizon, which is more of a concept than a location, advertised in flyers and segmented by Eastern economic interests but barely settled; those who have attempted it have seen their homes destroyed by the Native Apaches whose lives and livelihoods they’ve disrupted. Currently, our attention is divided among a mother and daughter who are among the few survivors of the latest attack and who are recuperating at a nearby federal fort; gunslinger Hayes Ellison (Costner), who becomes entangled in a multi-territory revenge plot; and Matthew Van Weyden (Luke Wilson), the reluctant leader of a westward wagon train. Numerous other plot threads are introduced — some quickly (and often violently) concluded, others barely hinted at — to the point that Chapter 1 ends with what can best be described as a preview of the rest of the saga. This is not just Costner’s “Megalopolis.” This is his “Lord of the Rings.”

And somehow, I enjoyed it. More precisely, I found myself relying on the trust I developed during my time covering television. I’m invested enough in the trajectory of many of the characters, especially Miller’s Frances Kitteridge — who is in a budding romance with Union Lt. Trent Gephardt (Sam Worthington) — to want to see where the project goes from here. And I’m intrigued by the choice to use this isolated, hardscrabble outpost, or the journey to it, as a perspective through which to examine the full range of social and political issues facing 19th-century (and contemporary) America.

As for whether distributor Warner Bros. genuinely expects the general public to watch and recommend this with so little immediate payoff, that’s another question. But fortunately, it’s one I’m not paid enough to spend any time answering.

So, what’s your take? Is “Horizon” the crowning achievement of Costner’s career or his cowboy Xanadu?

Joshua Rothkopf: Michael Cimino — all is forgiven, please return. I bring up the late director of 1980’s “Heaven’s Gate” because there already exists a cowboy Xanadu, one that is still trying to move beyond its reputation as a notorious Hollywood flop and cursed film. But we didn’t realize how good we had it: At least “Heaven’s Gate” was shot by the talented Vilmos Zsigmond and attempted to convey big ideas and a narrative.

“Horizon” is television. I mean that literally, although it’s obviously not something I can prove. It has dramatic peaks every 50 minutes or so — a raid, a gunfight, a surge in orchestral music. “Chapter 1” feels like a mishmash of the first three episodes (along with a brief teaser of future moments at the end) given a glamorous Cannes premiere. It’s understandable, Matt, that your “capacity for trust,” borne from covering TV, allows you to connect with it on a deeper level than I can. To me, it’s an imposter in a festival filled with authenticity.

If “Horizon” is TV, what kind of TV is it? I can’t help but think of James Poniewozik’s recent essay for the New York Times about what he termed Mid TV, or “prestige TV that you can fold laundry to.” It’s, you know, just fine. “Horizon” is ridiculously over-complicated and filled with redundant characters, giving it an epic “scope” that aspires to emulate an E.L. Doctorow novel but isn’t justified, at least not yet. (Generously, it’s one of those shows your friends would tell you to watch with the disclaimer that it takes a few episodes to “get going.”) You choose your favorite character from the decent, unexceptional cast — for me, it was Danny Huston’s exposition-heavy colonel, who says things like, “That’s how they’ll reason in the face of fear” — and wait for their turn to come around.

It helped pass the time. It probably helped that I love westerns. More concerning are some of “Horizon’s” mundane stylistic choices. Aren’t you bothered by the professional lighting’s flatness and the color palette? Those silly transitions between scenes? The methodical editing that chops everything into a bland TV mix? I never thought Costner had a visual style to begin with, but at least on “Dances With Wolves,” he had cinematographer Dean Semler, who also worked on “The Road Warrior” and “Dead Calm.”

Did you feel like you were watching a film? I felt like checking my email.

Brennan: Classifying “Horizon” as television could account for its aesthetic, which reminded me of a trend dating back to at least “Game of Thrones”: placing otherwise uninspired shot-reverse-shot filmmaking against dramatic cliffs and stunning landscapes to distract from the absence of visual style.

But, like in TV — which is, after all, a writer’s medium — I found myself drawn into a debate over the narrative and ideological potential of “Horizon’s” structure that kept me engaged even when it started to resemble my laptop’s screensaver. Unlike the more focused, hard-edged period westerns that have dominated the genre in recent decades, such as James Mangold’s “3:10 to Yuma” or Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight,” this one blends melodrama, romance, action, and even moments of comedy. I appreciated this traditionalism, which reminded me of the old approach to grand cinematic storytelling, even if the project’s star power and serialized nature suggest prestige (or “mid”) TV.

For me, the more problematic issue, and one that is hard to judge in a multipart narrative, is “Horizon’s” treatment of its Native American characters. In a film set in the 1850s and otherwise devoted to classic Hollywood conventions, the inclusion of Indigenous characters and languages from the beginning of “Chapter 1” — as Apache children watch father-son settlers from a rocky overlook, wrongly assuming it’s just a “game” — is a hopeful sign that Costner intends to portray the pioneers as criminals in their own right, stealing Native land through legal means.

By the end of the film, though, I was starting to worry, not only because the Native characters that have been introduced lack the depth of the Kitteridges or Costner’s Hayes Ellison. While “Horizon” develops Native characters mainly in relation to the political crisis they face, the Anglo “white-eyes” have love (and sex) lives, religious institutions, business interests.

It made me think of a line from the film where an Irishman in the Union forces says, “We don’t make our history any more than they make their weather.” In other words, in “Horizon’s” perspective, Anglos have families, while Natives have war; Anglos have history, Natives weather. I can only hope that the portrayal of the Apache characters becomes more nuanced in “Chapter 2,” due in August.

So I’ve now moderated my praise. Did you find any redeeming qualities in it?

Rothkopf: You’re asking for a lot, my friend. Let’s discuss that writer’s medium for a moment. As you pointed out, “Horizon” attempts many tones, but would any writers’ room on a show spend its first three hours compiling them in such a lifeless, sequential manner? We’re talking about the development of at least 20 major speaking roles through impressionistic snippets and pieces, none of these plot threads intertwining (at least not yet).

It’s a lengthy movie — I just wish it had more emotion. We barely get to know the Kitteridges before a raid on their homestead wipes most of them out. Wouldn’t it have been more helpful to know them beforehand? It feels strange to be asking a three-hour piece of entertainment for more connective tissue, but that’s where I am with this.

I share your concern about the project’s portrayal of Native American characters, and the solution should be giving them more screen time — not, as we hear a few times, by having white characters say the term “Indigenous,” which is anachronistic to 19th-century conversation. It would be better to portray racism honestly, not water it down.

Positives? I enjoyed it when Luke Wilson appeared as the leader of a wagon train guiding a group of pioneers through Kansas Territory — a party that includes a pair of clueless Brits who assume their fellow travelers are their servants. The actor from “Idiocracy” is a master at playing frustrated slow-burning characters; had the whole thing been trimmed down to a comedy, I probably would have enjoyed it more (as someone who believes Costner’s best western is 1985’s “Silverado”).

And I do know there was at least one person at Cannes who loved “Horizon,” although perhaps for different reasons: Francis Ford Coppola.