Movie #34: Released in 1956, directed by John Ford, 119 minutes. New to me!
LetterBoxd score: 4.5 stars
You know what this movie reminds me of? The book of Job. Both works pose questions their genre lacks the power to answer satisfactorily, and so instead resort to a lame answer that fits genre conventions.
Job is a story that faces straight-on the question of how God can allow terrible evil. I don’t think there are satisfying answers to that question, when posed in certain ways, that fit with the rest of the Bible. But every story needs an ending and so the story just waves away the question and basically says “everything is fine, go about your lives.” Indeed, there’s a strain of scholarship that thinks Job was revised at some point in history by authors unhappy with its ambiguity. They inserted language to make it a more conventional story, better fitting into the rest of the Bible.
The Searchers also opens with great evil, but muddies the situation sufficiently that there is no clear path a hero can take to get to a satisfying resolution. Debbie has become Comanche. She has almost no family worth returning to. But the Comanche slaughtered her family (in fashion surprisingly dark to me, given the era: rape and murder is implied). The conventions of the Western call for the family to be avenged, Debbie rescued, and restored to her former life. (Right? I don’t actually know a bunch about westerns) That’s impossible. In fact, Ethan plans to kill her. How are they going to end this?
They take a page out of Job and just have it all work out. Actually, Debbie can be rescued willingly, the family avenged, and Edwards can have a change of heart. It’s not quite as lame as Job (in my opinion), since Edwards has gone on a years-long odyssey with Martin, and begun to see him as more than his race. I believe his decision not to kill her. I struggle more with Debbie’s decision to be rescued and her seeming embrace of the life she left years ago.
The movie also has some slightly out-of-place sequences that feel like the trappings of a different kind of western. Martin is in love with a girl, but the whole subplot is kind of played for laughs. Honestly, I liked this stuff, basic guy that I am, and maybe it’s better to leaven the mood, but it does feel a bit out of step with the movie’s grander ambitions.
What are those ambitions? Well, for one, finally, someone on the Sight and Sound list is using widescreen color technology to capture landscapes (ok, a few good examples in A Matter of Life and Death). No joke, the first shot really is breathtaking. There are some scenes that you can infer are filmed on a studio, but the wide shots are incredible.
But more broadly, the story is kind of an episodic portrait of western life, tinged with darkness. They search for years. For years! If Ford pitched this today it would be a three season long television show. Thank God he made it when he did.
Why would someone think it’s one of the ten greatest movies ever made?
It’s a western for intellectuals who hate westerns! All the grandeur, all the complexities of a three-way cultural collision, but without the simple* heroics.
That said, I’m a little cool to the whole thing. It just didn’t move me very much. Might be as simple as feeling distanced from the style of acting.
*Am I being unfair to the genre? I guess I need to watch more.
Next time: A Man Escaped