by Matt Gaskin
I think the movie itself is best understood as an existentialist drama, meaning that it focuses on questions of what it is to exist, and how we go beyond mere existence to become conscious beings living in the world. It's a story set in the past, but the subject matter itself is both salient and modern.
Life on the frontier, and participating in the war against the native peoples of the west, is a symbol for the ever present but hidden truth of the situation all humanity is born to. We are in fact surrounded by death, the impermanence of peace, and are ourselves both perpetrator and victim of a chaotic and violent world, obscured by our technology and culture. The seeming order of the world is at once replete and incredibly delicate in the face of real crisis, a tension between the calming influence of tradition and the terror of survival in the face of death. An apt analogy for this is the difference between sitting down for an evening meal purchased at a store, and roaming starved through the wilderness with only your wits and a sharp stick to help you survive 'til morning. The former is disconnected from a state of pure being, while the latter is entirely composed of it. We could also describe this as the animal within, the part of humanity which doesn't think but acts instinctually. This state of being lays beneath the tradition and culture stacked on top of it, a reality hidden beneath a reality.
The contrast between this connected world of pure being with Captain Blocker (suffering from PTSD and in denial about the guilt he feels from perpetrating atrocities) and Rosalie Quaid (a Job-like figure who had her family murdered in front of her and was later found in ashes) and the disconnected world of the Harper's journalist and the wife of Lt. McCowan bring this presence of this "hiddeness" to light. The journalist blithely mocks Blocker's apparent bigotry and pain, openly laughing at his suffering from behind a camera. That's a bit on the nose, but I mentally hung a sign on that character which read "this guy is us looking back and glibly judging the past".
In a similar vein, Minnie McCowan discussed the treatment of Native Americans over food as idle dinner conversation, or to elevate herself as a person who cares about the downtrodden without actually doing anything other than talk. I hung a sign on her that reads "Facebook". In these scenes, the audience is able to see what the characters cannot, that their remoteness from the actual violence and reality of the world has made them detached and stupid, or using an existentialist word, inauthentic. This is why Quaid's decision to continue on the journey to Montana, through a wilderness filled with killers and rapists, instead of remaining in the safety of civilization was significant. It is better to accept difficult and deadly truths in order to face them directly, than to remain safe under the protected care of denial.
So this is the essential problem: How to awaken from a life of pure instinct without lulling oneself to sleep through self-deception, and taking responsibility for one's actions in the world? How does one find meaning in meaninglessness? In a scene by the camp fire Blocker is reading what appears to be "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar, and Quaid asks him a question: "Do you believe in the Lord, Captain Blocker?" He responded, "Yes ma'am I do, but from my experience I don't believe he sees what's happening out here." Regardless of belief in God, the question remains, how do we act when it appears that we are the only actors either capable or willing to interact with the world? If there is a God, then it doesn't appear that's he's doing anything, so what now? Quaid's response is the turning point, the pivot of the entire film. She says, "I don't know how I would go on if not for my faith."
There are at least three scenes that I remember which demonstrate living as a "leap into faith". Both Blocker and Quaid go through a similar process, they first deny that a horror has been visited on their lives, they scream at the sky, they claw at the ground, and then they contemplate suicide. It's at that point where they are presented with a choice, either to choose life, or choose to end it. In their cases, they both chose life, but why? Blocker and Quaid, each in their own way, ultimately chose to live for the purpose of relieving the suffering of others. They took the immense depth of their grief, a darkness so deep and a feeling of such abject powerlessness in the universe that they had no other recourse left than instinctual acts of futility (screaming, repeatedly shooting the dead), and turned it into an equally deep well of empathy. As they turned to "the other", they found both meaning and purpose, and a reason to continue. The "leap into faith" meant dropping the gun to their head for an unseen and unprovable future that held a yet unknown worth. Compare their journey to that of Sgt. Metz, who essentially faced the same crisis, but when he recognized his situation in the world, was unable to make the same leap. The choice of these characters are the same belonging to all humanity. Every new day is a leap into faith.
It's this turning toward "the other" as an act of faith which ultimately rescues Blocker and Quaid from the apparent hell of existence, symbolized by their moving from the dead and empty desert to the lush and living wilderness of Montana. The famous phrase by Sartre, "hell is other people", is not a pithy reference to describe our general annoyance with others, but meant to describe the process by which we see ourselves mirrored in the minds of others and we are tormented by how "other people" see us as we are seeing them. Before Blocker was able to see anyone else as an authentic human being like himself, he had to face the fact that both the image of himself and others was an obscuring of reality on par with that of the journalist and the McCowan's from the beginning of the movie.
The contrast between this connected world of pure being with Captain Blocker (suffering from PTSD and in denial about the guilt he feels from perpetrating atrocities) and Rosalie Quaid (a Job-like figure who had her family murdered in front of her and was later found in ashes) and the disconnected world of the Harper's journalist and the wife of Lt. McCowan bring this presence of this "hiddeness" to light. The journalist blithely mocks Blocker's apparent bigotry and pain, openly laughing at his suffering from behind a camera. That's a bit on the nose, but I mentally hung a sign on that character which read "this guy is us looking back and glibly judging the past".
In a similar vein, Minnie McCowan discussed the treatment of Native Americans over food as idle dinner conversation, or to elevate herself as a person who cares about the downtrodden without actually doing anything other than talk. I hung a sign on her that reads "Facebook". In these scenes, the audience is able to see what the characters cannot, that their remoteness from the actual violence and reality of the world has made them detached and stupid, or using an existentialist word, inauthentic. This is why Quaid's decision to continue on the journey to Montana, through a wilderness filled with killers and rapists, instead of remaining in the safety of civilization was significant. It is better to accept difficult and deadly truths in order to face them directly, than to remain safe under the protected care of denial.
So this is the essential problem: How to awaken from a life of pure instinct without lulling oneself to sleep through self-deception, and taking responsibility for one's actions in the world? How does one find meaning in meaninglessness? In a scene by the camp fire Blocker is reading what appears to be "The Gallic Wars" by Julius Caesar, and Quaid asks him a question: "Do you believe in the Lord, Captain Blocker?" He responded, "Yes ma'am I do, but from my experience I don't believe he sees what's happening out here." Regardless of belief in God, the question remains, how do we act when it appears that we are the only actors either capable or willing to interact with the world? If there is a God, then it doesn't appear that's he's doing anything, so what now? Quaid's response is the turning point, the pivot of the entire film. She says, "I don't know how I would go on if not for my faith."
There are at least three scenes that I remember which demonstrate living as a "leap into faith". Both Blocker and Quaid go through a similar process, they first deny that a horror has been visited on their lives, they scream at the sky, they claw at the ground, and then they contemplate suicide. It's at that point where they are presented with a choice, either to choose life, or choose to end it. In their cases, they both chose life, but why? Blocker and Quaid, each in their own way, ultimately chose to live for the purpose of relieving the suffering of others. They took the immense depth of their grief, a darkness so deep and a feeling of such abject powerlessness in the universe that they had no other recourse left than instinctual acts of futility (screaming, repeatedly shooting the dead), and turned it into an equally deep well of empathy. As they turned to "the other", they found both meaning and purpose, and a reason to continue. The "leap into faith" meant dropping the gun to their head for an unseen and unprovable future that held a yet unknown worth. Compare their journey to that of Sgt. Metz, who essentially faced the same crisis, but when he recognized his situation in the world, was unable to make the same leap. The choice of these characters are the same belonging to all humanity. Every new day is a leap into faith.
It's this turning toward "the other" as an act of faith which ultimately rescues Blocker and Quaid from the apparent hell of existence, symbolized by their moving from the dead and empty desert to the lush and living wilderness of Montana. The famous phrase by Sartre, "hell is other people", is not a pithy reference to describe our general annoyance with others, but meant to describe the process by which we see ourselves mirrored in the minds of others and we are tormented by how "other people" see us as we are seeing them. Before Blocker was able to see anyone else as an authentic human being like himself, he had to face the fact that both the image of himself and others was an obscuring of reality on par with that of the journalist and the McCowan's from the beginning of the movie.
Throughout his journey, Blocker had lied to himself for the purpose of avoiding responsibility for his actions. His atrocities were "just doing my job" (shades of Hannah Arendt's "Banality of Evil"), and his suffering was blamed on the actions of "the other", specifically Yellow Hawk. He couldn't accept what he had done, and who he was, because the truth was more painful than he could possibly live with. But then they picked up Sgt. Charles Wills in order to escort him back to a prison camp where he would be hanged for murder. Wills was a mirror for Blocker. When Blocker saw Wills, he saw himself, and when confronted with the reality that they "were the same" and that no one in the camp had the right to judge because they were all guilty of equal crimes, he was faced with the existential choice for a second time, another leap, another opportunity to uncover what he consciously did not want to accept. Unlike his previous crisis, where he went out alone in the desert with a gun in his hand, he turned toward Quaid and embraced her. She accepted him as himself, knowing his crimes, and knowing the truth. He did not retreat into denial, but accepted the truth of Will's statement for what it was. At that moment he was able to accept his own inner darkness, and then became capable of seeing and forgiving that darkness in others. He saw himself in the mirror, and instead of turning away, he made peace.
Wills was also a mirror for Metz, but instead of accepting those hard truths as Blocker had done, he rushed out to destroy them, killing Wills and then killing himself. Killing Wills was itself a symbolic suicide, turning the gun to his forehead was nothing more than finalizing the act. Instead of internalizing and transforming the truth, he lashed out and collapsed into a pessimistic nihilism. There was a pointlessness to the pursuit and no end or purpose to his suffering, so Metz killed himself. In a similar manner, Elk Woman was a mirror for Quaid. They were both mothers, both suffered through the loss of their children, were literally raped and figuratively so by the happenstance of their lives, but were able to break through that darkness by seeing themselves in the other. Elk Woman shared her dress, they protected one another, and Quaid ultimately adopted Elk Woman's son. The truth behind the suffering is that we are all human, all responsible to a degree, and we can find purpose through embracing the lie and denial which comes from killing the scapegoat, "the other" which acts as a receptacle for our guilt.
Blocker and Quaid suffered immensely, chose to live through a leap into faith, saw the truth about themselves through the mirror of the other, and took these experiences to extend their own humanity to encompass Yellow Hawk and his family. They were all the same, no longer "other", and at the point they were able to adopt this feeling of oneness, they finally became authentic human beings. They had been through the valley of the shadow of death, avoided the temptations of lies and denial, had struggled through the wilderness, ultimately returning to peace from a place of abject destruction. This is the human experience.
Wills was also a mirror for Metz, but instead of accepting those hard truths as Blocker had done, he rushed out to destroy them, killing Wills and then killing himself. Killing Wills was itself a symbolic suicide, turning the gun to his forehead was nothing more than finalizing the act. Instead of internalizing and transforming the truth, he lashed out and collapsed into a pessimistic nihilism. There was a pointlessness to the pursuit and no end or purpose to his suffering, so Metz killed himself. In a similar manner, Elk Woman was a mirror for Quaid. They were both mothers, both suffered through the loss of their children, were literally raped and figuratively so by the happenstance of their lives, but were able to break through that darkness by seeing themselves in the other. Elk Woman shared her dress, they protected one another, and Quaid ultimately adopted Elk Woman's son. The truth behind the suffering is that we are all human, all responsible to a degree, and we can find purpose through embracing the lie and denial which comes from killing the scapegoat, "the other" which acts as a receptacle for our guilt.
Blocker and Quaid suffered immensely, chose to live through a leap into faith, saw the truth about themselves through the mirror of the other, and took these experiences to extend their own humanity to encompass Yellow Hawk and his family. They were all the same, no longer "other", and at the point they were able to adopt this feeling of oneness, they finally became authentic human beings. They had been through the valley of the shadow of death, avoided the temptations of lies and denial, had struggled through the wilderness, ultimately returning to peace from a place of abject destruction. This is the human experience.
Excellent, excellent film and Christian Bale is superb once again in his performance...there are some harsh, heartbreaking scenes in this movie. But Matt’s review definitely provides the insight it deserves.
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