Review of The Searchers (1956) by Chris D — 24 Feb 2012

I was very on-edge about this film, mainly because Wayne's character is so remarkably unlikeable: there were few points that I found his character to be anything but totally barren of humanity and decency (ex. shooting out the eyes of a Native American, which according to their tradition would damn the man to wander in the afterlife for all eternity). In the context of the greater conflict between the U.S. and Native Americans I saw Wayne's character on the wrong side, and the entire conflict is a large stain on our country's history: foolish men pretending to run the world.

A highly complex film, perhaps I can revisit it later and soften up a bit, but I thought the entire message of the film was "off" and missed the mark. At every turn, I saw persistent attempts to paint Native Americans and "Yankees" in the caricatures that reinforced the hatred of those groups in the South. The implication during the film that the older daughter was possibly raped (or otherwise brutalized) before she died was grotesque: how complex can Wayne's character really be if the backdrop of the film allows the audience to totally sympathize with his sociopathic/racist tendencies? The Union Army is made up of incompetent soldiers and Native Americans truly are savages in The Searchers, so it's difficult to stand up to either one. Perhaps this is all a grandly distorted project to portray how Texans felt toward these two groups, i.e. in a similar manner as blacks in "The Birth of the Nation", except this film's director would have purposely distorted the lens (where Griffith was simply naive and insensitive to African American history) The film is clearly sharper than the average Western, and Wayne's performance is more complex than I likely can even consider, but it left, in the end, a bitter taste on my mouth. I'm likely biased from reading/watching "Dances With Wolves" first: Debbie very likely would have been better off remaining with the Native Americans.