Confession: I skipped a review of the last western I watched, Fort Apache. It had been too soon after El Dorado, and while it was more distinctive in plot and possibly better overall, I just couldn't muster the motivation to write about it. Well, four months is plenty of time to get back in the mood, this time with a feature inherently more different, coming from the '70s.
Under the direction of mainstay Sydney Pollack, Robert Redford plays a mountain man in the Rockies. His story starts out as possibly the most episodic western I've seen, but patterns emerge. For all the loneliness of his lifestyle, certain people show up either for an extended period or repeatedly, as if for "bookends." Others die quickly, because there is a lot of tension on the frontier, particularly involving Crows. His victories allow him to pass into legend (based loosely on a real legend recorded in a few books).
The Netflix summary slightly exaggerates the theme of Jeremiah fighting off natives. He tries to be a good neighbor to them, taking note of differences between tribes. Only after a second-half clash does he have to watch his back all the time.
Jeremiah's longest companions are Caleb, a boy who never speaks, presumably due to the trauma of seeing Blackfeet kill his siblings; and Swan, an arranged Flathead bride who speaks no English and doesn't seem to have picked up her father's French. Jeremiah doesn't exactly welcome either, but they become pretty much family for him. That's a big improvement on what follows the marriage in The Searchers in my book. Of course, when they all seem happy-ish around the halfway point, you know something's going to go very wrong.
The other recurring companions are themselves mountain men. Old "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp (Will Geer) has gone a bit funny in the head from all his reclusion. Del Gue (Stefan Gierasch) owes his survival in scalping country to baldness, which doesn't stop him from feeling vengeful against Blackfeet.
At 108 minutes, the film's a little short to be given a prelude and an entr'acte. But I'm not complaining, partly because they have the courtesy to tell us up front how long they last. Besides, the score, written by two guys better known for acting, is quite pretty. The titular song is, eh, typical of the genre; it fits well at least.
And no, the 108 minutes don't feel longer. Mountain man life would surely feel slow, especially during times of complete solitude, but the makers do a good job of skipping over the boring parts. Nor does it pack in enough to get overwhelming.
If you want a '70s western that's not too quirky, this makes a fine choice. Gritty? Now and then, but unless you've restricted your taste to the Hays Code era, it's not likely to shake you.
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