a review of 花村

MANNVANUARY DEUX #17: To be honest I wasn't sure what to make of this one for the first hour or so, especially with regards to Beatty as the main character. It wasn't until I got to the final setpiece, with the burning of church (and the rallying of the townsfolk) set against the quasi-surreal gunfight between McCabe and the bounty hunter gang that I understood what this was all about: It's an allegory for the domestication of the frontier, with the enterprising scoundrels represented by McCabe and his cohorts finally burning themselves out as more genteel civilization (as embodied by Julie Christie's Mrs. Miller) takes root.