Jeremiah Johnson

(Sydney Pollack, US 1972, 100 min., 35mm)

National Parks. Around 1850, ex-soldier Johnson (Robert Redford) decides that he would rather live alone as a mountain man in Colorado than deal with society’s constraints. Johnson strives to live peaceably in the rugged environment, trading with a Crow tribe, adopting an orphaned boy, and marrying the daughter of a Flathead chief. The US cavalry, complete with a puritanical Reverend, interrupts the idyll to compel Jeremiah to lead them through a Crow burial ground to rescue white settlers. After the Crow kill his family in retaliation, Jeremiah turns into a legendary Indian killer at the expense of his original ideals, before a final moment of grace. The film captures both the appeal and challenge of the landscape and questions white colonialism. Wavering between heroizing Jeremiah for surviving and damning him for killing, Jeremiah Johnson is a great example of Vietnam-era cycle of critical westerns that questioned the old western myths and reinterpreted them as genocide. Shot in Utah’s Ashley National Forest, Uinta National Forest, and Zion National Park.