Quantum Cowboys, a film by Geoff Marslett

This 2022 film, part rotoscope, part drawings, part live-action, all imagination, is an exploration of time; space; whether the universe has consistency or coincidence or is so overcrowded with multiverses that everything can happen all the time; and how the further we get from a memory/ history, the more we agree on what happened. The grand mystery with the most possible wrong answers is “what did you do yesterday?” 

If you’d rather watch things explode at high volume, then go see the new Mad Max or Godzilla. But if making you think, and wonder, and laugh, is more interesting, Quantum Cowboys is a good bet. 

In brief, Frank and Bruno are shoveling horse manure in a town about to be dedicated as Yuma, Arizona in 18-whatever. Frank becomes entangled in a shooting he doesn’t believe happened, and is so intent that after 3 years in prison he enlists Bruno to help him find the man who died, to prove he didn’t. It’s Schrodinger’s Cat all over again, and again, and again. Sometimes he’s dead, and other times he’s – not? Or only when you look?

Along the way we are treated to anachronism, odd moments that repeat under different circumstances, and slapstick. With the Western genre to play around in, where modern culture (worldwide) imagines the American West to be gunslingers, saguaros and Monument Valley with a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, Marslett gives us a version that brings events around until finally some different resolution emerges.