i've never been a big fan of westerns, with few exceptions, because i always equated the mythology of the wild west with the decimation of the native american. as a teenager i was obsessed with the (little known) film Windwalker which had dialogue in Cherokee and Crow, no english. i liked Dances with Wolves, which was entertaining, but thematically not very adventurous. wind in his hair was also super fine.
but the classic genre of the john wayne western? - oh no . he represented to me the diefic white american male; nothing i had any interest in exploring. generations were so obsessed in this mythos of the tall, strong, master of the universe, riding a horse, and staying stupid shit like 'pilgrim'. my pops used to love his old WWII movies; 'john wayne was a bad ass dude!' he'd say smiling.
i'd just roll my eyes in contempt.
well as you get older and more sophisticated, you reflect and maybe the adolescent attitude was just narrow-mindedness, that so ain't cool. i've always been a movie geek, just more of the intellectual arty drama, horror-gore, and sci-fi variety. i see everything the cohen bros make, scorsese, antoine fuqoua, spike lee to spike jonze. the magnificent seven was very cool (if for no other reason than re-making kurosawa's seven samurai into a western). i like clint eastwood's collaborations with sergio leone as well. but you see, eastwood was infinitely cooler (to me) than some apple pie john wayne.
but his collaborations with john ford are considered some of the best american westerns ever made. one in particular, even insofar as influencing other filmmakers, is the searchers. recently i was reading about Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Quahadi Comanche Indians. his mother, Cynthia Ann Parker, was an anglo-Texan abducted by the Comanche as a young girl. she married the war chief, Peta Nocona with whom she had two sons, Quanah, Pecos, and a daughter, Prairie Flower. By the time the Texas Rangers found Cynthia Parker, she no longer identified with being white and died partly from heart break and ill health, trying to re-assimilate with her family. the novel the searchers, by alan le may was inspired by Parker's story.
so my curiosity was piqued to check this movie out. i was very cynical as classic hollywood and the depiction of people of color tends to be unbearably racist, have the narrowest vision (whites always rule and win) and these characterizations can be downright agonizing to watch; i.e., actors in blackface being chased by the KKK (birth of a nation).
the searchers honestly blew my mind. wayne plays an on-the-verge confederate war vet, ethan edwards. he's got serious issues; racial issues, emotional issues, a man undone by life, war, and self-isolation. his racism grotesquely turns into vengeance when Comanches led by, Chief Cicatrice (Scar), kill his brother's family and burn down their homestead. Cicatrice steals away with ethan's two nieces, lucy, the eldest, and debbie. he finds lucy's tattered dead body in a canyon and spends the next five years tracking the comanche and debbie.
the shots in this film are stunning; mostly shot on location in southern Utah and the painted desert of Arizona. the color is saturated so the earth is this deep red-brown and the sunsets blaze. horses run across wide-frame majestic landscapes. the lighting techniques are gorgeous. there's actual native american actors in it, speaking comanche, not just white actors mimicking. (of course Chief Cicatrice is played by a white actor, in headdress, and his character is relatively two-dimensional. remember, this was 1956).
if you can separate your 21st century mind from the racism of that time and place, the sexism, and patriarchal oppression of the old west; it's a western greek tragedy full of inter-twining characters, subplots, and choruses (the posse, the comanche). it's part tragedy and part odyssey. there are some unsettling scenes, such as when ethan and martin meet several prairie damsels who've been 'rescued' from their native captors. two sisters, huddled together, wrapped in a blanket have red marks across their foreheads, looking wide-eyed and ghastly. like in some permanent state of touched-by-savages shock.
'they don't even seem white anymore.' martin says.
'they ain't.' ethan says.
The Searchers has obsessed many filmmakers, critics, and scholars in a manner unusual even for those with a passionate love of cinema...The Searchers is one of those rare films that reveals something new with every viewing...The Searchers is so dense with meaning the only way to understand it is to slow the projection time to equal the five year diegetic time.
- Arthus Eckstein
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