The Wild Wild West

The Searchers

A movie I saw recently -The man who shot Liberty Valence piqued or rather rekindled my interest in westerns. I then saw another timeless classic – High Noon mesmerised by a constrained performance of Gary Cooper and a concept of the movie happening in real time. Extremely fast paced and not the typical good versus evil movie High noon kept my interest in a movie marathon going. And perhaps as fate would have it the best movie was reserved for the last- The Searchers.
The Searchers like many of the movies I like to review was not considered by the critics at the time of release (1956) to be a John ford classic. Indeed it was overlooked by the academy at the time. But as time has progressed it has found its way into the twenty greatest movies ever made almost every decade since. The searchers is again not the typical western where in the characters are either good or evil. There is a deep conviction in character portrayal and Ford shows us why he is considered to be one of the greatest directors of the century.
The plot outline is as follows- Ethan Edwards, returned from the Civil War to the Texas ranch of his brother, hopes to find a home with his family and to be near the woman he obviously but secretly loves. But a Comanche raid destroys these plans, and Ethan sets out, along with his 1/8 Indian nephew Martin, on a years-long journey to find the niece kidnapped by the Indians under Chief Scar. But as the quest goes on, Martin begins to realize that his uncle's hatred for the Indians is beginning to spill over onto his now-assimilated niece. Martin becomes uncertain whether Ethan plans to rescue Debbie...or kill her
The movie examines the deep racism at different levels that was/Is imbibed in the American society. John Wayne ( I must say here another one of style icons having watched him Hatari all those years ago and having grown up on his black and white westerns on Star tv every Sunday in third standard) as Ethan Edwards is outstanding and it is a pity that it was not recognized at the time of release. The conviction with which he played the role almost made me think as to what the character was going through. The movie achieves greatness not because it was a breakthrough movie to even adress the issues of racism but to have shown what the west was at the time and sheer blunt way of putting it forward. Unlike High noon- in where the movie takes place between 11am and 12.15 pm of a day the searchers takes place over 5 years. Its one of those movies that you feel you grow with ( the first movie that I felt this emotion with a movie was James Cameroon’s- the abyss).
Another reason that I would put this movie at such a high pedestal is that in showing the blatant racism Ford does not try to justify his characters heroes or for that matter “the Villains” which I feel is what progressive cinema should be about- Cinema that makes you think of an issue that you have never thought about before and to form an opinion on that issue without being guided to the opinion of the maker of the film. All of these issues aren't dealt in a conventional way of film making as being part of the mainstream story but is inherent which again just adds to the shear brilliance of the movie. A five star rating in all departments of film making!