Jeremiah Johnson (1972, Dir. Sydney Pollack)
Synopsis:
Young war veteran, Jeremiah Johnson (Robert Redford), sets out to live the life of a “mountain man”, surviving by hunting and trapping up in the Rocky Mountains. After a difficult start when he nearly starves and freezes to death, he’s lucky enough to fall in to the company of experienced trapper, Bear Claw (Will Greer), who passes on a lot of his knowledge before Johnson once more decides to make his way on his own. He does well, doing his best not to offend any of the Indian tribes nearby and along the way acquires a surrogate son, in the form of an orphaned boy whose family have all been killed and a squaw wife, the daughter of a local Indian Chief. For a time it seems as if Jeremiah has finally found the life he was yearning for. But then, tragedy strikes and the man who just wanted a peaceful life goes on a vengeful rampage.
As I’ve done the last few years, I’m beginning this year’s series of posts with a film with a wintery mis-en-scene. This underrated gem of a film, is often overlooked when people look back at the careers and films of both Robert Redford and director Sydney Pollack, so much so that I’d argue that the now ubiquitous gif of Redford nodding, taken from the film, and which I constantly see used on Twitter, is possibly more famous than the film itself.
It’s certainly quite an unusual film on both their filmographies: it’s rare that Redford gives such a taciturn performance as this one (it’s a million miles away from his role in Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid just 3 years earlier) and Pollack is hardly the first director you’d think of to produce a western (he was invited to direct the project by Redford, after the two had worked so well together on This Property Is Condemned) but the result clearly benefits from what they both bring to the material, which had previously been offered to both Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood. In their hands the story which, on the dvd restores the original music overture and intermission with Entr’acte music, becomes an epic and tragic saga that reminded me more of the novels of Thomas Hardy or perhaps Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, with their scope, episodic storylines and ultimately tragically elegiac endings, than other westerns. In many ways, in fact, this doesn’t feel like a western at all, but rather a story set in that time period. It shows the obvious hardships of the frontier/mountain life incredibly well due to the film’s extensive use of various national parks and other locations in Redford’s adopted home of Utah. The stunning landscape is as much a character in the film as Redford or any of the other actors and due to the film’s tight budget (the studio had wanted it to be shot on the backlot, Redford and Pollack refused and Pollack remortgaged his house in order to help cover the additional costs of filming on location) they rarely did more than one take. So when Redford plunges into the freezing water after the fish he’s trying to catch in winter, he really is shivering and you can almost feel the chill in your bones whilst watching it.
The film also takes care to show the Indians not just as an homogeneous, nondescript people, but as individual tribes, some more volatile than others and never simply as either a faceless enemy or unfortunate victims. It doesn’t stint on the atrocities that they committed or were committed against them, anymore than it shies away from Redford’s character shooting and killing animals, though it is also equally frank in its portrayal of the arrogance of the soldiers and especially the Reverend (played with a superb arrogance by Paul Benedict), making it clear that they have no sympathy or understanding for either the land or its people.
The beautiful cinematography by Paul Buchanan is nicely paired with the score by Tim McIntire and John Rubinstein (including songs by McIntire), who got the job after they managed to get a tape of their music to Pollack. I’m not always a fan of scores than mix both songs and incidental music, but the mix sits nicely here, with the folky quality of the songs and the pastoral music combining to make something that feels both ‘of the period’ and yet, at the same time apart from it.
Obviously, it’s Redford’s performance that holds the film together and if, like me, you’ve only really seen him in more showy, movie star roles where he’s plays the charming leading man, might be surprised by his quieter more underrated performance here. It’s interesting to discover that the part was intended for Clint Eastwood, who we’re more used to seeing playing grumpy, often largely silent characters whose personalities are filled shades of grey. Yet Redford handles it well.
Despite being a commercial success and receiving mostly positive reviews, the film seems to have become slightly forgotten about in the intervening years, even though it’s rarely been unavailable on home media for very long, and is currently easily available on blu-Ray. If you’ve never seen it or haven’t seen it for a while, perhaps it’s time to head up into the mountains and submerge yourself in the landscapes and the seasons.
