Movie Review: The Searchers
72John Ford’s fairly famous western movie, The Searchers, is highly popular, (in terms of that cowboy film-oriented genre once fairly dominated by Ford), with, some people might be surprised to know, the artsy-fartsy crowd of enlightened cognoscenti or the intellectual class; this is largely because of its, one can then so reasonably surmise, to them, very felicitous depiction of Uncle Ethan, as is forever portrayed most convincingly by the actor John Wayne.
The film’s chief protagonist and very dysfunctional hero, the character Ethan, represents both superbly and unequivocally to progressives or liberals the evidently archetypal or, at a minimum, proto-frontiersman, meaning a sociopathic semi-psychopath, filled with an ever irrational, vengeful, American-style, creedal bloodlust for righteously and sadistically exterminating Native Americans (AKA Indians) wherever and whenever possible. This is the perception of anti-American intellectuals and, in a related sense, their view of American history regarding frontier life.
It is a largely stereotypical rendition of what amounts to bashing White people, in the minds of progressivist movie critics and viewers of this film, under the guise of what ought to be only the telling of a simple western story of Texan homesteaders versus Indians.
But, the specific focus of progressive-minded appreciation relates to how anti-American intellectuals enjoy this picture as to its depiction of a mentally disturbed person; he is someone who really appears as a sort of anti-hero with a psychologically crippled attitude displayed toward how he confronts the world; the anti-hero image is what they intensively lust after, not the various or related accoutrements of a merely action-packed western done through the courtesy of Ford.
Although it is freely conceded here that, of course, many conservatives do also enjoy this film, however, those on the political Left usually have quite different reasons for ideologically liking this flick, definitely well beyond its obviously basic pretensions to simply depict a western tale.
So, what is meant? This movie is clearly regarded as being an existential, modernist, and adult-oriented film, in firm terms of its suspected Freudian characteristics and phenomenological appurtenances, which, thus, do make it readily stand out as being surely far superior to almost all other pictures, meaning in its own particular genre, concerning the run or effort of the usual cowboy/western motion picture.
Such is the justification, the ideologically-based rationalization, for this particular flick that so forcefully feeds the loathing and hatred that most domestic liberals and almost all leftists have for their country, which is not the same as saying, as a needed qualification or caution, that Ford had intended such a curious result.
And yet, it can be still freely and openly admitted that The Searchers does, as is usual with Ford, contain certain paradoxical and enigmatic elements of a questioning nature concerning society and a man’s relationship to it.
This is by which the director had, deliberately, sought to shadow a struggle with his own inner demons by having certain characters, in his films, maintain character flaws, which are mostly directed against traditional social, family, and other intimate human/societal values that are put to question, at least implicit if not mostly explicitly.
Ford, thus, could be very psychologically subtle, and more than is usually appreciated by uninformed observers. A review of this film’s story will, therefore, bring out requisite meaning within the noted above context presented.
Assessing Uncle Ethan’s Rather Deranged Character
So, first, let the film be quickly discussed. He comes unexpectedly back, as an ex-Confederate, some few years or so later from the American Civil War, also called the War Between the States, the War for the Southern Confederacy, without any explanation whatsoever; moreover, during the course of the entire story, he never substantially provides to his relatives any particular details, as to what exactly he had been doing; it is, generally, suspected that he just became, in the interim period, an outlaw, however, because he has, amazingly, acquired a great deal of money, meaning in an unexplained manner.
In a later scene, after almost everybody in the family gets killed by the Indians, except for a very young girl named Debbie, his niece, he then sets off with a nephew and a boyfriend of an older niece to search for any survivors.
And yet, death is ever close to the characters in this movie. The boyfriend goes crazy with grief, after being told that the Indians had killed his much beloved girlfriend, to whom he had been engaged; and, filled with an enraged sadness, wildly charges uncaringly, with frenzied hate, into the hostile Indian camp and, of course, encounters a certain death as a set consequence.
It is not surprising, therefore, that a forever lurking darkness, filled with an open terrible brooding and foreboding tense despair, is felt, quite palpably, throughout the overriding thematic thrust of this film, as to a seeming fatalistic sense that death is almost preferable to life on the 19th century American frontier.
Later, Ethan and the nephew (who is partly an Indian, by the way, whom he somewhat distrusts), then more fully become the (by now almost fabled) searchers, then take up the monumental search again, for many dreary and involved years; quite tremendous hatred, for the Indians being relentlessly chased and especially for their (equally hate-filled) chief named Scar, is increasingly building up in Ethan and his nephew, growing more worried, fully knows it.
Finally, after many other things and events do go on and etc., they do catch up to those reviled Indians who have Debbie; at one point in time, Ethan actually thinks about killing the woman because he feels that she, over the many years, has been horribly “converted” into a hated Indian; he surprisingly relents, however, saves her, and brings the woman back to live with friends of his who, also, as easily welcome the nephew back.
The existential assumption is that the entire reason for the extended search would have become completely meaningless without at last saving her, the primary object of the self-assigned task, which becomes a kind of mini-epic.
At the very close of this deliberately troubling film, the final scene ends as Ethan morosely turns away, in an intense physical gesture of lonesomeness, to seemingly indicate that, most likely, he fully intends to just ride away and leave these people to the (unwanted?—by him) natural pleasures of both hearth and home and its many traditional values; his niece and nephew, thus, do have, in fact, a real and decent home to belong to, a legitimate sense of place; Ethan, however, has nothing.
The movie just ends, as the door of the house simply slowly closes with him being outside (the outsider, again).
The above represents, in brief, the basic synopsis of this story, though readers are, of course, welcomed to go get a DVD (or other media) copy to actually see the film for then better making an independent assessment and judgment of it and, moreover, of its highly problematic and truly far from perfect main character.
During one illustrative point in the movie, it is important and instructive to note that Ethan explains just how Indians are always very different from any White men, in critical terms of pursuing something or someone; Ethan knowledgeably and authoritatively, it is assumed by the viewer of this film, states that an Indian will only, eventually, make just a plainly clear and final decision (which appears to be mainly rational and, moreover, wholesomely sensible in fact) to stop chasing after something or a person; this is when he has, thus, logically decided, it is assumed, that enough reasonable time, effort, attention, etc. has been fairly devoted to such a search, hunt, or chase.
But, a White man, according to Ethan, is manifestly completely different, in this specific regard, at the very least. He will determinedly keep going and going well beyond all reason (after reason itself is exhausted to the fullest extent) until he has absolutely achieved his desired objective and, furthermore, totally regardless of the possibly inordinate cost in (excessive) time, blood, effort, money, etc. It seems that fanaticism is natural to White men.
White men, when enraged, and especially as infuriated White men qua frontiersmen, become mentally and morally obsessed, psychologically fixated, beyond all normal reason in terms of a sustainable hatred based naturally upon the desperate desire to willfully exterminate Indians, a substitute for the Devil, it is assumed; therefore, the socially and culturally acceptable and expected killing of these mean red devils provides meaning and justification.
This is, one guesses, certainly for the leading of an honorable life decisively dedicated to perilously searching for an enemy to eagerly wipe off the face of the earth; it is in desired terms of positively eliminating what is regarded as a primordial evil, the Red Man, in this case.
This is, then, the so manifestly semi-psychopathic element to the presented and mainly quite hardened and determined character of Ethan who, in addition, appears as just a compulsive sociopath in that he, apparently, has an observed and rather cold indifference toward any killing; this is inclusive, by the way, of the easy and satisfying slaying of many of his own fellow White men, meaning whenever or wherever circumstances may call for it, and for it to be routinely done.
And, that, in fact, happens existentially when he, interestingly, sets a trap at his night camp, using his own nephew as unknowing bait, for enjoyably wiping out a bunch of murderous thieves intent upon robbing and murdering him and his (distrusted) relative.
Conclusion
The Searchers will, therefore, turn up often at John Ford film festivals in Hollywood and elsewhere, as being representative of the best movies he made; and, of course, intellectuals, literati, cognoscenti, etc. will, forever, eagerly glorify this flick above and beyond many others done by Ford and other directors because it is among those motion pictures that help to give fuel to anti-American fires.
It depicts fairly what is believed to be, in the minds of ideological progressives, a theatrical or fictive representation of a more profound or deeper reality, a kind of symbolic masterpiece, as to its inherently and integrally pure and undiluted vision of what the real frontiersmen qua the hated DWMs (dead White males) were then actually like.
Although this movie has, admittedly, some light and funny, touching and humorous, scenes, however, it is, always in its true essence, an extremely dark film that roughly and vividly shoves at its viewers the forever morally and mentally dubious protagonist who seemingly delights in killing and, furthermore, enthusiastically lives for the tremendously exhilarating joy of seeking lustful revenge, as overtly seen, for instance, in his scalping of the Indian chief.
One guesses, in the set context of this movie, that all such DWMs were of that murderous nature as a simple and crazed part of their absolutely flawed character.
It is known that scalping in its explicitly raw physicality is, thus, Freudianly viewed, in modern terms, as a being a vicarious kind of analogous rape or, in another appropriately sexual term, symbolic castration of someone. Uncle Ethan (or, … is it really Uncle Sam) didn’t just want to kill Indians but viciously wanted, in a sense, to savagely castrate all of them as well for good measure.
The DWMs, those who had lived and fought on the ever-advancing American frontier of the 17th to 19th centuries, were, when perversely viewed in such a skewed progressivist manner, mentally and morally deranged Uncle Ethans; they were those massacre-minded miscreants who psychotically ravaged and murdered both senselessly and horridly, the absolutely innocent Noble Savages who had, pleasantly and peacefully, inhabited the lovely and idyllic, pristine and untainted, North American Eden.
To this immediately above rendition of obvious Leftist fantasy, one can then only say, in a substitute expression for pure manure: Bullfrogs!
