Review of The Hired Hand (1971) by Jenna I — 10 Feb 2017

A shockingly honest and existential western that doesn't try to flatter its characters in any way. It's very Of It's Time, but it's still the type of movie that's more subversive than you realize until you look back at it as a whole. Hired Hand is all about looking at classic Americana themes and trying to understand their motives in an age of psychology and introspection.

I was very impressed with the sexual and emotional frankness of this movie. Hannah Collings (Verna Bloom) absolutely steals the show as Harry's (Peter Fonda) deserted wife. From her amazingly feminist speech about why she has no interest in being a kept woman for any man, to her calling out of Harry's loyalty and love for another man over his love for her. It's amazing to see the cowboy male dynamic get called out in this way. There's nothing dramatic, there's no accusations of whether it's a sexual love or not, but whatever it is for Harry, it's refreshing to see it being called out -as- love.

Then there's the young man who cries out for his mother after being shot (not shown as a 'pussy' but as an actual sad scene!), or the banal male violence and posturing and the meaningless deaths caused by it. Hired Hand strips away the glory of frontier masculinity and lays it bare in the harsh light of day. The movie demands you psychoanalyze the classic western themes of your parent's generation to find those parallels to the counterculture generation - emotional love, free love, sexual fluidity, the pointlessness of violence, the beauty in nature - otherwise you'll be bored out of your skull. (To Peter's credit, I don't think this movie would have been nearly as successful if it had these characters come out and have these revelations themselves.).

I will say I was totally turned off by the freeze frames and most of the camera work here, though it certainly did seem to be about 10 to 20 years ahead of its time for the VHS generation of slow fades and bland music-video-esque montages. The movie also drags, though that might also be because for the first half of the movie I was expecting a straight western. I also feel like the movie would have been more emotionally powerful if it had just focused on Hannah as a character but c'est la vie.

Hired Hand sort of feels like Peter Fonda's self portrait. A deeply personal film made with a frank, counterculture slant by the hippie son of western masculine hero Henry Fonda.