Do not forsake me, Io my darling

Outland (1981), while not an "official" remake of High Noon (1952), obviously borrows from it — a lot. If it had been made in the last decade (don't look now), it would probably be called a "reimagining" of High Noon (thanks to Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes), for it uses many of the same plot elements and essentially transports it to outer space in what is, at least superficially, a science fiction movie.

I say "superficially" because Outland is really more of a "man vs. the establishment" film. It looks like science fiction due to its location in a mining facility on Jupiter's moon Io, and because it has spacesuits, talk of zero atmosphere, and the analysis of a mysterious chemical compound — a recreational and often deadly narcotic being pushed by the mining facility's administrator, Sheppard — but its central conflict arises from Marshal O'Niel's decision to stand up to corruption, a conflict which could exist among the trappings of any genre and which is not necessarily best served by a specific one. I also hesitate to call it a "space western," for though it takes place along the lawless "frontier" of deep space, the mining facility is a corporate outpost, not necessarily a future Earth colony. Based upon O'Niel's wife's desire to return to Earth, we can assume that Earth is still a desirable and livable home. But these are debatable quibbles...

Outland seemingly duplicates much of the plot of High Noon: O'Niel's decision to interfere in the drug trafficking soon puts him on the defensive against a pair of hired killers, his wife leaves him prior to the showdown, his deputies are reluctant to help, and no one else wants to take his side against the criminals. These similarities, however, are also superficial, and altered enough to make their effects significantly different than those of their counterparts in High Noon. The hired guns, for example, have no personal grudge with O'Niel, no history with him at all, in fact. Their motive is strictly professional, and while the workers on Io do not want to interfere, it is not out of friendship with the killers or with Sheppard. O'Niel's wife leaves not because of any danger a potential showdown presents — indeed, she leaves before any such showdown is foreseen — but because her husband's work has meant tour after tour at remote space facilities, which she feels are not healthy for their son. (There are subtle hints that she understands what Sheppard reveals later — that O'Niel's reputation as a whistle blower has won him a string of unpleasant assignments, but she does not explicitly give this as a reason for leaving.) O'Niel's deputy, unlike High Noon's Harvey Pell, does not covet the marshal's job — he is a knowing bystander who has been silenced by Sheppard through bribery and a desire to live.

What is most interesting in the comparison of Outland to High Noon — and what makes the former ultimately less complex and challenging — is that the factors that made Kane's decision in High Noon so difficult have been altered so much that they are virtually irrelevant to O'Niel's decision. There is no longer a citizenry whose conflicting desires make the marshal's decision questionable. In High Noon, where it is explained that life in Hadleyville was dangerous and lawless before the Miller gang was stopped, some citizens want to help Kane, but are too afraid to do so, while others look forward to Frank Miller's return. In Outland, we never hear from the workers about the quality of life before or after Sheppard became manager, nor do we know their opinions about O'Niel's actions. Furthermore, the danger in Outland is not as generally applicable — while we can assume that anyone taking the dangerous drug could be at risk of death, we are not shown that everyone on Io is taking the drug. While both marshals decide rather quickly and instinctively what their decisions should be, O'Niel's decision seems far less complicated and his course of action seems much clearer: he is an officer of the law, therefore it is his job to stop the illegal and dangerous drug-running.

There is also in Outland a moment (my favorite in the film, as well as one of my favorite bits of Sean Connery acting) that is absent from High Noon, when O'Niel admits that his motives are personal. On the racquetball court, Dr. Lazarus asks him why he is standing up to Sheppard. "You know," she tells him, "if you're the kind of guy you're supposed to be, you wouldn't stick around. That's why they sent you here."

O'Niel replies:

They send me here to this pile of shit because they think I belong here. I want to find out if...well, if they're right. There's a whole machine that works because everybody does what they're supposed to. I found out I was supposed to be something I didn't like. That's what's in the program. That's my rotten little part in the rotten machine. I don't like it. So I'm going to find out if they're right.

In High Noon, there is never as direct an admission from Kane that part of his motivation is personal. We can assume that Kane is not facing Miller entirely for the town's benefit, but we must decide the ratio of personal motivation to professional.

Comparing Outland to High Noon is easy enough to do — Outland borrows so much that it begs comparison. However, the comparison is ultimately unsatisfying and unfair, as it may lead one to feel that Outland is a failure at reproducing the complexities of the "original," instead of a success at becoming a different film entirely.

See also: The Dilemma of High Noon

The dilemma of High Noon

The story seems to mean different things to different people . . . [Producer Stanley] Kramer, who had worked closely with [Carl] Foreman on the script, said it was about a town that died because no one there had the guts to defend it. Somehow this seemed to be an incomplete explanation . . . I vaguely sensed deeper meanings in it; but only later did it dawn on me that this was not a regular Western myth.¹

- Fred Zinnemann, Director

I first watched High Noon in my early twenties. I had just received my degree in Film Studies and was accustomed to looking for "against the grain" readings of popular movies, or, at the very least, to looking at westerns like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence as essays on the diminishing relevance of the traditional Western hero. So I was well prepared to do the following: First, to assume that High Noon had one established popular reading, and Second, to find one counter to it.

It was my preconceived supposition (based upon the bits and pieces I had heard about it already) that High Noon was probably a conservative film, one which advocated confrontation and machismo over reason and an intellectual society. What I saw instead was a refutation of that; I saw the townspeople — many of whom did not seem to object to convict Frank Miller's pending return — letting their marshal know that his outdated code of honor must not interfere with the continuing development of the town. In marshal Will Kane I saw a man who refused to put the safety of the town in front of his own personal grudge with Miller. I agreed, essentially, with the plea made by Hadleyville's mayor (played by Thomas Mitchell), that gunfighting would damage the growing town's reputation, and that Kane should leave at once and take his problems with him. To me, the treatment of Kane was in line with the door shutting on Ethan Edwards or the coffin lid being closed on Tom Doniphon.

Cut to twenty years later.

I recently watched High Noon for the second (then third, fourth, and fifth) time, and my thoughts were very different. This time I felt more sympathy for Kane. He became the target of Miller's revenge while in the service of the town, after all, so why shouldn't the town stand up for him later (much in the same way our government offers secret service protection to former presidents)? And despite the fact that Miller and his gang had been arrested or run out of town, the handful of years since then did not seem sufficient for the people to be able to consider their nascent town free of the troubles of the lawless West. Surely they needed to contribute more than taxes to establishing and preserving a peaceful society.

I also learned, thanks to DVD special features that were not available on the VHS copy I had originally watched, that screenwriter Carl Foreman had meant for High Noon to reflect the oppression of blacklisting in the era of McCarthyism, something he was experiencing at the time. In my subsequent viewings, I could easily see how Kane could represent a blacklisted professional whose friends and colleagues no longer want to have anything to do with him for fear of the consequences (the death of one's Hollywood career being represented by the possibility of physical death in a gunfight). I was pleased to know that such a liberal message could exist in a Western — indeed, be one of its stronger readings.

At the same time, I could very easily see how the movie could be appropriated by the Right. The townspeople could certainly represent stereotypical liberals — intellectuals who would rather debate the issue than take real action (as they do in the church scene), and who feel their problems should be solved by government (one of the citizens feels the politicians "up north" are responsible for Miller's parole, so they should somehow take care of things; another says that Kane is paid to take care of such matters himself).

I was therefore not surprised to learn that the movie has been revered and condemned by conservatives and liberals alike (see High Noon's Wikipedia entry for some interesting examples), nor that among its fans are political leaders of opposing parties, for many of the questions asked by the film concern the relationship between government and citizens:

1. Who is directly responsible for the welfare of society — the people or its appointed officials?
   
2. Do people need to take direct action in society, or is it enough to vote and pay taxes?
   
3. How much responsibility does the citizenry have toward its appointed officials?
   
4. Where is the line between an appointed official's professional and personal duties?
   

High Noon endures in part because these questions endure, and because it does not offer definitive answers to any of them.

¹Zinnemann, Fred: A Life in the Movies: An Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1992), 96.