Jeremiah Johnson
What the actual fuck is Robert Redford doing in a trademark John Milius ultra-fascist constructed piece of frontier Americana? I’m shocked at this combination, absolutely shocked. This is no young shame either, it’s at the prime of his career. Centrism can absorb anything.
This is almost a silent film, and it would be even better without dialogue, not much would be lost. The non-diegetic country music interludes are also jarring.
It sure is pretty, until the snow runs red… This is what The Last of the Mohicans wanted to look like, or a proper Jack London adaptation, not Call of the Wild.
The protagonist (calling him JJ, he doesn’t say his name until at least 30 minutes in) is some soldier who gets away from it all to go to the Colorado territory, all the way up in the mountains, to trap furry animals and sell their pelts to the highest bidder.
He must have been honourably discharged, because he has enough money to go into a Whites-only General Store and purchase a horse, a pack mule, and a 30 cal rifle (he really wanted the 50 cal, punk).
He’s pretty goofy at mountaineering, always freezing cold, jumping in the water to catch fish with his bare hands (and failing), letting clumps of snow fall into his fire. He then finds a kind old man trapping grizz, and he teaches him the ways of the mountain men. This is basically slapstick, the old man aggros a grizzly to the cabin and lets him kill and skin it.
They keep exploring the surroundings, trapping beavers, eating an enormous amount of elk meat, until they are found by a pack of natives (Paints His Shirt Red, for maximum racism), who are not happy they trespass on their land and eat their animals. JJ bribes them with his pelts. He will get far, with this knack for diplomacy.
JJ is autonomous now, so he leaves the old man, and strikes out on his own. After complaining about a lack of poontang, he comes across a bloodied woman, babbling like crazy as her kids lie dead outside her cabin. JJ just matter-of-factly buries the bodies and finds a kid hidden in horror. After preparing some food, he is about to high tail out of there, but he decides to help. The woman just wants to die, but she wants the boy to go with JJ. He is no father material, but relents.
They find some bald dude buried until the neck in the sand. More indian attacks, it seems those are the same that killed the children. Our JJ is no animal, he won’t let anyone alone without a horse and a gun. They track the band that buried him and stole his shit, but JJ avoids going in gun blazing, they wait for the night and snatch “his” stuff. But the bald dude is a psycho, so he massacres the injuns and takes their scalps.
This word spreads, and our JJ is known as the avenger of the Crazy Lady. He is picked up by another tribe, but the bald dude is smart and moves the scalps to JJ’s horse. Those indians hate the dead ones, and in his wisdom, JJ offers the scalps and the ponies, just being diplomatic.
But these are meek indians, the chieftain gifts him his own daughter to marry. Apparently, if he turns her down, they will be slaughtered, so he accepts it, he’s got a squaw now.
She cooks and takes care of the kid, but they can’t even speak the same language. He hates her cooking and hates her Christian ways even more. She can lie down on the bear skins without her clothes on, that’s an universal sign for porking that crosses the language barrier.
They all just get along just fine, and JJ does the meme as he is getting his last beaver pelt. They build a log cabin (how did they build the roof?), and are happy enough, for an 19 century arranged marriage with an adopted kid.
Until the army passes by, and shanghais him into getting to some pass where three wagons are stranded, waiting for death by exposure or Indians, present company included. He takes them there, under duress, and crosses an indian burial ground too, against him wishes.
As he gets back, the indian burial ground sounds spookier, so he double times it, but doesn’t reach the log cabin before the kid and the wife are dead, by the same red skin something from the beginning. This time, the revenge is real, he tracks and massacres the Indians that did that.
After that, he roams the wilds without rhyme or reason. His encounters with the old man and the bald guy (with hair) are brief affairs. He will not go back to living in a town. He makes peace with Paints His Shirt Red in the end (with a crypto Nazi salute, this is still Milius).
As if this couldn’t get even more right-wing, this was supposed to be directed by Sam Peckingpah with Clint Eastwood. They would go all the way and it would turn into Red Dawn with adults.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.