Once Upon A Time In The West

This Leone/Morricone stone cold classic, epic Western, does everything you would expect it to do, and is, thus, magnificent.
There is actually a very tiny amount that happens; you could sum the three hour plot up in about two sentences. This kind of doesn't matter though, from the very start, the famous first scene of the Railway and the entrance of the Harmonica Kid, we are enveloped in a slow moving direction, a direction that isn't overly fastidious or fussy but allows us time to settle, time to wait, time to examine the dust, the mountains, the desert. And it's all the better for that.
The characterisation is at once minimal, and penetrating. We never really know what's going through a character's head, in the spirit of the West these are nowhere people, distant, directionless. This is explicated by the lack of dialogue across basically the whole movie, except for some classically coined epithets. The time lingered on individuals, the close ups and acknowledgements of sweat-beads, pores, stoicisms, tells us that these distant creatures are all the same really humans. Tough, breathing, stone-like humans.
The plot is deliberately confusing, slow, not really going anywhere. It is a meander along the landscapes, the atmosphere, the cast of driven charaicatures who stand among the leads and must be gunned down. The actors follow their paths and don't put a foot wrong. Your female lead is not as awfully mysognisic a characterisation as can sometimes be criticised, though does have pre-enlightenment moments of work.
As for the music (or really general sound effects), what could initially be a little grating and toneless is, through repitition and strong recurrent usage, found to be one of the most memorable parts of the films. The same sounds repeated at different times take on and develop meanings of their own, take on hauntings, sadness, power. The use of co-ordinated drips, gunshots, metal clanking on metal, is at once naturalistic and highly stylised. This is an opera, a grand and magisterial one, with the realism not compromised by the musical impositions.
Leone's directing brilliance will be curious to be followed across the (in fact earlier released) 'Dollars' Trilogy. In this classic, he justifies the epic run time (never bored, could have happilly gone on longer) by assembling a wide cast of landscapes and scenes that never fail to grip. Individually, he operates wonderful close ups, never obtrusive work that always focusses on the characters, even when not literally focussing. An epic, a classic, the work of a master and a key film in the cannon of cinema. Stunning.