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GERONIMO and Some
Other Films About Indians
Lt. Charles Gatewood ....... Jason Patric
Brig. Gen. George
Crook .... Gene Hackman
Al Sieber .................. Robert Duvall
Geronimo ................... Wes
Studi
Lt. Britton Davis .......... Matt Damon
Mangas ..................... Rodney
A. Grant
Brig. Gen. Nelson
Miles .... Kevin Tighe
Columbia presents a film directed by
Walter Hill. Produced by Hill and Neil Canton. Written by John Milius and Larry Gross. Based on a story by Milius. Photographed by Lloyd Ahern.
Edited by Freeman Davies, Carmel Davies
and Donn Aron. Music
by Ry Cooder. Running Time:
115 minutes. Classified: PG-13 (for frontier violence).
"Geronimo"
presents again the revisionist view of Native Americans seen earlier in such
films as "Dances With Wolves," "Last of the Mohicans." All three of these films are
beautifully directed and photographed, with sympathetic portrayals of
the Indian point of view. Generally speaking I tend to be critical
of "political correctness," but I liked these films very much,
and their presentation of the Indians' case is really compelling,
a needed balance to the "murderin' redskins" stereotype.
"Dances" did demonize whites, except for the lead character, played
by Kevin Costner. (How did he get to be
so wonderfully broad-minded after growing up in such a
depraved culture?) It also demonized the Pawnee, because they helped the whites. But its
portrayal of the Indians' lives was superb. It was all done in the Sioux
language, with subtitles, and that made it all the more effective. Graham Greene gave a marvelous performance as the main Indian
character.
"Mohicans"
was actually somewhat biased toward the whites. Magua,
the voice of Indian grievances, was presented (of course as James Fenimore Cooper did in the original volume)
as somewhat unreasonable in his hatreds. But he did get to make
his case, and allowing for exaggerations, it was cogent.
"Geronimo"
is also a most impressive film, with an excellent performance by Wes Studi as the title character.
(He also played Magua in "Mohicans.") The action takes place mostly among
Monument-Valley-type buttes (like hundreds of other westerns, it seems),
but in this picture, the buttes are often dwarfed by snow-capped Rockies. I thought at first that was a bit much, but
the film seems to focus on the greatness of the land and the importance of
a just distribution of it. Why, says Geronimo,
do the whites have to have all of it?
Good question.
His argument essentially is that he
is not a murderer, but a warrior. And that is simply true. There was a war
between the whites and the Indians and, as it turned out, the whites
won. We may think what we want about that, but we should set it
in perspective. For thousands of years, nations have been
conquering nations. It is not a pleasant experience, especially for
the conquered, and we would often like to believe that we would
never permit that sort of thing to happen today. But it is
still happening in our own day, even in supposedly civilized Europe. The
Indians may have a grievance, but no more than any other conquered people.
And, to be fair, most all nations, including whites and Indians, have been
both conquerors and conquered at some time in their history.
The history is, of course, more
complicated than any of these films present. One gets the impression from
them that the Indians held some legal title to all the land in North
America, and the whites came in entirely against the will of
the landowners. Actually, "land ownership" was not a big thing
with Indians; on that account they are often praised. (One cannot,
by the way, simultaneously praise the Indians for their lack
of concern about land ownership and then turn around and say
that their owners' rights were violated.) And the coming of the
whites was welcomed by some of the Indians. They were happy to
enter into fur trades and the like, which supplied them with
additional resources, not to mention the new technology of guns and
horses. Indeed, the expansion of trade improved some Indians'
living standard considerably.
Of course, some Indians resisted the
whites from the start. But the continent was certainly big enough for both
the immigrants and the earlier inhabitants (they were immigrants
too) to live together in peace. Ultimately, however, that
proved impossible. What should have happened? As a believer
in relatively free immigration, I don't believe the whites
should simply have stayed out, or that the Indians should have kept
them out. The best thing that could have happened (I say
with hindsight) was a legal division of the continent some time
early in the process, wherein one part of the continent would
be developed as a part of western civilization, with Indians welcomed
to be a part of that if they chose. The other part, perhaps the greater
part of it, would be left to the Indians to observe their traditional way
of life. The two nations would freely trade with one another. (I still
wonder if it might be possible to give to the Indians some of the huge
tracts of federal lands in the west-- not as reservations, which are
an atrocity, but as the Indians' own sovereign territory.) Of course,
that didn't happen, and it couldn't have, granted the events and the
mentalities of the people involved.
"Geronimo"
is somewhat more balanced in its perspective than either of the other
films I have mentioned. The warriors on both sides are simply that: men at
war. They are neither glorified nor demonized,
and the film makes it clear that neither side is monolithic in its
attitudes. There are "hawks" and "doves" in both
armies, some who are cruel, some who seek justice. There is little
moralizing here, but the film ultimately sides with the Indians, I would
say. The American soldiers aren't bad people, except, perhaps, for General
Miles who takes over the army late in the film. But the political
situation takes on a life of its own, and it becomes impossible for the
Indians even to save face, let alone to obtain justice.
There are some rather subtle
religious themes in the picture. The exquisitely beautiful musical score,
by Ry Cooder, is based
on the "shape note" hymns of the nineteenth century, found in
such volumes as "Sacred Harp" and "Southern
Harmony." You may recognize "Come, Ye
Sinners, Poor and Wretched" and "Poor, Wayfaring Stranger."
This literature was largely Biblical, but with a tendency toward religious
escapism: longing for heaven without much sense of anything to do on
earth. It's a bit hard to see why the film makes so much use of this
music, except for period atmosphere. Certainly at least it conveys
something of the harshness of life on both sides, the impossibility of
any happiness this side of the grave. Perhaps there is also
some subtle mockery of the irrelevance of the white men's religion to the
achievement of concrete justice.
Both Geronimo
and Gatewood (the most sympathetic
white soldier) believe in gods of love, they say. But for Geronimo, love for his people requires him to kill
whites. Geronimo gives Gatewood
a turquoise piece valuable (perhaps religiously?) to the Apache. Later, Gatewood gives Geronimo a cross,
which he says has brought him good fortune. The cross doesn't do much for Geronimo and his people. Perhaps the most significant
religious event is that before three Indians are hanged, one of them tells
onlookers in the Apache language not to believe anything that the
white clergy say to them.
The film doesn't show it, but I understand that late in life Geronimo became a Christian and reconciled himself to the US government, even riding in Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural parade. It would have been interesting to see how all of that came about. Of course, focus on those events would probably have been inconsistent with the purposes of these filmmakers. They are not, of course, required to tell everything. But we should demur a bit from the viewpoint of a film in which the actual facts, even very interesting facts, are omitted because inconvenient to the film's "message."