Movie star and director Kevin Costner recently explained the influence of faith in his newest Western film, Horizon: An American Saga. The film details the plight of settlers on the frontier. According to Costner, the epic tale of the strenuous journey would be incomplete without depicting the important role of the setters’ faith.
Costner illustrated how many American settlers left their old lives behind, packing up and voyaging into largely uncharted territory. Naturally, such a journey was filled with uncertainty and immense hardship, and they relied on their faith to persist.
”Faith is what guided people out there to the unknown,” he told The Christian Post. “They just leaned on it. There was this promise, but the promise was not enough. You had to go on faith. And people brought the religion with them west.”
The award-winning actor and director further explained the impact his Christian faith and church participation have had on his life. Costner stated that his experiences from growing up as a practicing Baptism have bled into his work. While he doesn’t “force it” into the movie, he explained that it was inevitably an integral component of the settler experience.
“I grew up a Baptist and church has always been a part of my life, my grandmother. the whole thing, so I don’t mind it bleeding into a movie,” he said. “I don’t force it in. But when I think about why people went west, when they said goodbye to people back east, they never saw them again, there was some kind of trust that people needed to lean on, because they were often times in situations where they didn’t even know what they were doing. They were out of control, they needed faith.”
Costner has become a defining force in the modern Western genre, known for his star role in “Yellowstone” as John Dutton. Reportedly, Costner has been working on the “Horizon” project for decades, investing millions of dollars. The actor noted that it required substantial faith that the movie would come to fruition.
“I’ve had hands over me, for sure, in my life, and I’m like anybody, I try to force it,” the actor continued. “I try to force things through force of will, and I’ve been able to do that a lot in my life. But I’ve also found that things come in their own time. I think that’s how my career’s gone, to be honest. Everything in its own time, I didn’t burst onto the scene as a teenager. It took me a while. So, I trust my journey.”
While the film is rated R due to its healthy use of adult themes, such as violence and sexuality, Costner has emphasized the influence that more wholesome themes, like faith and family, had on the story. “I wanted [Scripture to] obviously relate to the situation,” Costner said
Reportedly, the movie features a variety of moments where Biblical Scripture is interlaced into the content. For example, a settler reads Psalm 91 in one scene, stating, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” See a trailer of the “Horizon: An American Saga” below:
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.