We have your first look at the theatrical key art for The Taking, one of the latest documentaries from our friend, the prolific documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe (78/52, Lynch/Oz and Memory: The Origins of Alien). Dekanalog is releasing The Taking in cinemas in the U.S. on May 5th.
The key art features three formations from Monument Valley Park, the West and East Mitten Buttes, along with the Merrick Butte. Or rather, it features the absence of them as they have been cut out from the image, which is the part of point in Philippe's doc. They're not just absent, but removed, stolen if you will.
It has been some time since I saw The Taking but I remember the contrary emotions I was experiencing as I noted each movie that used Monument Valley as a shooting location, movies that I had seen throughout my years, and one of the key discussion points of Philippe's doc, the misreprensentation and mistreatment of the area's original inhabitants.
It's been nearly two years after its premiere at Fantastic Fest and sadly a movie like The Taking will likely be forever relevant to it's time for years to come.
THE TAKING Arrivesin U.S. Cinemas on May 5th!The latest from the award-winning cinema historian behindTHE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCASDOC OF THE DEAD78/52: HITCHCOCK'S SHOWER SCENEMEMORY: THE ORIGINS OF ALIENLYNCH/OZand the 2023 SXSW hitYOU CAN CALL ME BILLTHE TAKING, the illuminating new cinematic essay from film documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe, uses the history of cinema to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape.Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Westerns has had a lasting influence on stock photography, advertising, and tourism. The valley has been given mythical significance as an image of a “primitive West” firmly in the hands of white people and meant to be protected from intruders.The fact that Monument Valley is traditional Navajo territory has been obscured in the process.A radical examination of Monument Valley’s representation in cinema and advertising since John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), THE TAKING scrutinizes how a site located on sovereign Navajo land came to embody the fantasy of the “Old West,” replete with self-perpetuating falsehoods, and why it continues to hold mythic significance in the global psyche.