I know Redford is heavily involved in the Native American community, directing many films to reveal their plight and even founding sundance largely to aid them in making movies.
So why did he make such a seemingly Anti-Native American movie in Jeremiah Johnson?
"So why did he make such a seemingly Anti-Native American movie in Jeremiah Johnson?"
So...why are there one of you everywhere I go?
Jeremiah Johnson is in no way, shape or form an ANTI anything movie, give it a rest.
Why would Redford make the movie? The money? The chance to work with Sidney Pollack? The John Milius script? I don't know.
Was the film anti-Indian? Well, let's see. The only people who die in the film are innocent whites and Indians. You figure it out. The montage of mayhem at the end of the film is a pretty good metaphor for the annihilation of American Indians by whites in the 19th century. From that vantage, the movie is accurate.
Huh? This movie is not anti- Native American at all. It does not sugar coat reality. Most movies either show Natives as mindless savages or as mystical eco-warriors in perfect balance with nature and man. By showing a more realistic portrayal of Native American life he is not patronizing them and thus is honoring their way of life.
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"Indians are no different than any other people. Some of them are/where violent assh*les and some are/were noble and friendly.
Just because you have some distorted, political correctness loving skewed view of the world, doesn't change the reality of the world.
People suck, no matter what race they are, and portraying Indians as all being some noble, crying at the sign of garbage bunch of humanitarians is as offensive and portraying them all as dumb savages that say 'how' and speak like Tonto.."
Agree. PC-ified characterizations are as racist as the old "woo-woo-woo" Injuns that were just mindless savages to be killed by the cowboy in the white hat.
"Dances with Wolves" does not hold up at all because of that kind of revisionist thinking, IMO, where JJ never gets old, even on the 100th viewing. The opening post reminds me of the old Jim Carrey bit on "In Living Color" where he would mince and swoon at anything not PC, like collapsing in horror at someone eating "beef."
Here's the abridged sequence of events:
Johnson goes into the mountains.
He is an unsuccessful trapper, so he gets help from Bearclaw
Bearclaw introduces him to a Crow
They trade.
Johnson later marries an Native American princess and adopts a young boy
He builds a cabin and lives in peace.
A band of people demand that he circumvent Native American law by going directly through a burial ground, which Johnson initially refuses to do.
Reluctantly, he acquiesces to their demands and leads them through it.
He comes home to find his house destroyed and his family murdered.
He sits in his home for an undisclosed amount of time, trying to deal with the sudden and horrific loss of his family.
He burns his cabin to purge the memory.
He hunts down the party that did the killing and allows one to live, probably to send a message, or for mercy.
He then is attacked, mano-a-mano by several Native Americans, and each time he comes out victorious.
He finally is met by the chief.
They both silently acknowledge the pointlessness of the continued bloodshed and come to a truce.
Fin'
From what I can see, Johnson is on good terms with the Native Americans right up until he leads the party through the burial grounds, at which time the Blackfoot tribe kills his family as punishment for desecrating sacred ground. Jeremiah then gets revenge on them for what he considers an unjust act. When that happens, the Blackfoot tribe wage war on him, until it becomes clear that he's simply too good for them to defeat and they call a truce.
How is that in any way anti-NA? By all accounts and comparing him to the way other white men treated natives back then, he was a saint!
Well GMB, Do you also think that Clint Eastwood shouldn't have directed "Letters from Iwo Jima"?
shareI think the OP has watched Dances with Wolves too many times, with its white-man-bad, indian-good message. The fact is that both cultures are part of the human race and 'man has dominated man to his injury' (Ecc. 8:9)
Otterprods, to keep those aquatic Mustelidae in line.
The film's not "anti-Native American" in the least. It simply attempts to show the way it was, like "Black Robe."
I want films to show me the truth and not whitewash history in the name of political correctness.
GMB, boy are you stubborn. The overwhelming vast majority of people here posting, myself included, do not see this movie as anti-native American. Redford would say the same thing. You also have one fact incorrect. Johnson lived at peace with natives until they killed his family. Afterward, he tracked down and killed those responsible, letting one live. Beyond that, he killed in self-defense.
The movie portrays Indians possible better than, certainly no worse, then the white man of the day.
If you brand this movie "anti-native," do you also brand Dances with Wolves as "anti-white man?"
ok, I'm late here. I don't know if I see this film as anti-Native American. Is Bruno Ganz an anti-Semite because he played Hitler as a human being in Downfall? Is the film also anti-Jewish? For me, Redford is an actor playing a roll. There is nothing in this film that at all suggests that the viewer should rise up against Native Americans or see them currently in any negative way. It's a film about a person in history, and things that were not nice happened. I would assume that this was a challenge to Mr. Redford's craft; which he no doubt appreciated.
Interestingly, what brought me here, was that I read an interview with Redford recently; which made me re-watch Johnson. Which then made me come here to read up more.
The interview (http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/print-view/robert-redfords-restles s-solitude-20131015) has this quote:
The next morning's repeat was less giddy. There was no Fiennes, no Chandor in the audience. Redford was largely alone. He didn't arrive for the clips and took the stage looking disheveled and tired. Someone asked him what kept him motivated as he closed in on 80. He mentioned his characters in 'All Is Lost' and 1972's 'Jeremiah Johnson,' in which he played a mountain man who carries on after the murder of his family.share
"They share one thing in common," said Redford, speaking softly. "When times are tough and survival looks impossible, some just quit; they give up. Because it's obvious they can't go any further. And others just keep going. They don't know anything more than to just continue. And I guess that goes for me, too. I will just keep going."
Killing people that killed his wife, is called revenge. Killing people who were native American because they killed his native American is also called revenge. Race had nothing to do with it.
It's been my experience that those who point the finger calling them racist, are usually the ones who are racist.
Random Thoughts: http://goo.gl/eXk3O
The thread goes back some years,but it's evident the OP and I watched different films
shareBoy, not even sure where to appropriately reply after almost 9 years ... But this question has bugged me since coming across it a couple of weeks ago. I'm with most of you, I don't see it as the anti-Native American movie the original poster did.
But let me bring up one name that might explain where s/he gets this idea: John Milius. Many of his screenplays have, shall we say, fairly jingoistic elements in them. "Red Dawn" is just too obvious, but think of the palace-assault scene in "The Wind and the Lion", where a unit of Marines double-time it through the city, set up their weapons and gun down the palace guards. It's a great, manly, invigorating scene - but it really does kind of rub you the wrong way if you let it.
Someone on the first page referred to the idea that Redford and director (?) wanted to give JJ some motivation, so they arranged the trip through the burial ground. I've also read that the actor (a Mexican) who played Paints His Shirt Red virtually always tried to subvert a script and present the characters he portrayed in a more positive light. I wonder if that isn't what happened in this film. I can picture him and Redford sitting around brainstorming about how to make it not quite so much like a typical Western with black and white characters.
Edit: I wonder, too, if the OP didn't have in mind the savagery of the Native Americans. That could be construed as a stereotype, I suppose.
OP is too dumb to realize how foolish he looks.
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