The Harder they Fall, directed by Jeymes Samuel is a Western film released in 2021. The film stars Jonathan Majors and Zazie Beetz as lead roles.
Before the opening sequence begins the titles say ‘while the events in this film are fictional, These. People. Existed.’ Immediately I am curious about what the directors means by this. Immediately we can tell the film is set in a rural area with no civilization near through the high establishing shot of a house surrounded by flat grass with a few hills in the distance, nothing for miles.
The house is basic and wooden. Inside, the house feels homely with kitchen wear hanging off hooks on the wooden walls, homemade trinkets, and piles of vegetables on the kitchen bench. The quite diegetic sound of crickets buzzing and birds squawking adds to the country setting. Because this film is within the Western genre, we can assume is it set in Southern America.
The Western theme is especially shown through the use of props and costume. The men who knock on the door and wearing cowboy hats, long coats, and boots, they also arrive on horses. These are stereotypically known for being in Western films. As soon as there is a knock on the door the atmosphere changes. The father opens the door to an unknown man, in the centre of the frame, forcing the audience to look directly at him. The camera cuts to an over the shoulder shot as the father says ‘no’ with an astonished look on his face. The villain walks slowly into the house without any dialogue, the sound of diegetic pleonastic chains rattling with each step of his heavy boots creates suspense. The tension of what he is about to do next is high. The non-diegetic soundtrack of violins adds to this tone. We can tell this man is an unwanted visitor when there is an eyeline match from the fathers' eyes to the gun hanging above the doorway, obviously considering grabbing it to save his families lives.
However, when the man takes out two shiny gold guns to show his dominance as he sits down at the table the father restraints from his idea. The mother and son's facial expressions are extremely frightened, their shoulders are stiff, and they do not dare to move. We still haven’t seen this man's face or why he is at their house.
The family wear quite country, conservative costumes with long sleeve blouses and shirts. They come across as quite a loving family as they eat dinner at the table together and say grace before eating. The son plays guitar for a bit before his father takes it off him for playing at the table, he doesn’t play with a devise. However, when they get a knock at the door, they feel unsettled to have a visitor at that hour. The lack of a soundtrack creates suspense. Their reactions sit in its silence. We can tell the man who knocks on the door is trouble because we never see his face. He is always either covering it with his cowboy hat or the camera angle intentionally doesn’t show his face. When he walks in the room the mother and son look terrified. He doesn’t say anything however through his mysteriousness we can tell he is the bad guy or the ‘villain.’
I think the rest of the story will be about who this man is and why he has come to their home in the middle of nowhere. Maybe the father and the man have a history, and he is going back for revenge, or it was just coincidence that it was their house the pack came across.
This opening sequence was definitely successful in my opinion. I was hooked and enjoyed the mysterious and suspenseful tone of the film. The man who is kept faceless, the lack of dialogue and juxtaposition of a peaceful dinner flipped into a life-or-death situation left me wanting to find out more.
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