Taylor Sheridan, working on reverberations…
Photo by The Weinstein Company/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock (8982471j)
Frontier Partisans is all about reverberations. While I love tales of the frontier for their own sake, the fuel that has kept my fire burning for most of half a century is the resonance, the reverberations of this history down across centuries. Apparently Taylor Sheridan has a similar outlook. No wonder I love his movies so much.
From Vulture.com:
Q: Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River were written within six months of one another. Aside from the fact that they take place in the contemporary West, what connections do you see between them?
A: They’re a thematic trilogy. Each is exploring the modern American frontier and how it’s changed since being settled — how much do the consequences of actions taken 130 years ago reverberate today? So that’s the landscape of the films, but you can’t make a movie about a landscape. The true theme of the trilogy is failed fathers — how they failed and how they overcame that failure. Then I wrap that into a suspense-thriller package.
Yeah, that’s gonna get it.
Sheridan says that he prefers simple plots and complex characters. I had never really looked at my own artistic preferences in that frame, but I think it fits. Complex plots can feel contrived and “writerly,” but you can’t go wrong with complex and even contradictory characters. That’s just… real.
Speaking of which…
Like Sicario, Wind River features a female FBI agent at the center of the action. In creating a strong female lead, Sheridan opens up space to do something that is almost subversive in the climate of the 21st Century — he keeps it real. Kate in Sicario was not a cartoon “badass chick” showing the boys how it’s really done. She was, in fact, way over her head. Not so much because she was a woman, but because she was a civilized person in a barbarous environment.
The ending sequence of Sicario makes Kate’s ultimate helplessness in the face of the apex predators brutally clear, as the assassin Alejandro says to her:
“You should move to a small town, somewhere the rule of law still exists. You will not survive here. You are not a wolf, and this is a land of wolves now.”
Something similar appears to be afoot in Wind River, where a tribal officer tells the FBI agent:
“This isn’t the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of you’re on your own.”
On the frontier, whether historical or contemporary, such concepts as gender equity are not only irrelevant, they are absurd. There’s a place for the badass woman kicking ass — I loved Atomic Blonde, remember — but not in the kind of story Sheridan tells. I applaud the man for keeping it real instead of indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasies. Kate in Sicario, and perhaps Jane in Wind River are not less for finding themselves at the mercy of predators, but they do learn their own nature — and what they are in the land of wolves.
Black Tyrone says
Jim, I would suggest that you seek out Barry Lopez’s book on wolves which I read in the late 1980s I reside in the Hudson Valley NY and have had the eastern coyote traspe across my yard on occasion. We call the “Brush wolves and they are not to be trfflled with.Nature is ever mighty and will replenish itself without help. I have spoken with NYS park rangers and hunters that have tracked evidence of NYS cougars and Moose in my state One keeps still on this so as not to upset the NYC crowd. Yes we will return to the primitive. I recall the quick look of a cougar in Last of the Mohicans film. Spelling? Pardon.
JimC says
I had the privilege of meeting Barry Lopez once. A mighty presence, that man.
Paul R. McNamee says
There was a very good show on PBS a few years ago about the rise of the eastern coyote and its penetration into suburbs and urban areas. Indeed, they are not to be trifled with. Technically, they are a cross between coyotes and wolves. Occasionally, even now, in deepest woods of Quebec, a first generation crossbreed is produced.
My sister is certain she’s seen a mountain lion out her way in western MA. She’s not one to mistake her wildlife sightings.
JimC says
Rewilding.
lane batot says
….and for fun–having been an Xtra(a most elusive coureur de bois!) on “Last of the Mohicans”(1991), I got privy to all sorts of behind-the-scenes stories; although I never heard much of anything about that cougar. But I agree, that one quick blip of a shot, which you would have missed if you blinked(like a lot of the few scenes I am in!), really got across that it was a WILD frontier. An interesting story was also how the dickhead-of-a-director(sorry, just my–and many many, others’ opinion!) got some domestic pigeons and had them painted a kinda purplish color to try and represent Passenger pigeons! It didn’t work out at all, and was abandoned, but really, what a great idea, at least! WHY no one, with CGI, has portrayed these vast flocks covering the skies of those days, I don’t know–it would be an EPIC scene! Perhaps in some future Daniel Boone or Simon Kenton movie!!!!!
JimC says
RE: Passenger Pigeons — from your lips to God’s ear. That’s a phenomenon I would love to see a simulacrum of
Craig Rullman says
Yes, and this: “You are asking how a watch works. Better just to worry about the time.”
JimC says
Love that.
Matthew says
The sheriff in Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men might be a male example of a character that is just over his head in a land of wolves.
There’s a story arc in the manga/anime Black Lagoon in which a teenage girl is forced assumed the leadership of a Yakuza clan. She ends up in a war with a branch of the Russian Mafia made up of a former (female) Soviet soldier and her platoon from Afghanistan. It doesn’t end well.
This does beg the question can someone run with the wolves and still maintain their sense of right and wrong?
JimC says
Good point on NCFOM.
Matthew says
William Faulkner once said, “The Past is not distant, in fact, it’s not even past.”
Frankly, people haven’t changed that much of thousands of years. America is still in someways a Frontier society.
annie says
Thanks Jim. Watching Sicario at this moment… Muy bueno.
JimC says
Hot famn! Marilyn & Ceili say hi.
J.F. Bell says
Heh. The illusion of progress. Also, one reason among many I find it fascinating to watch some bemoan the sort of darker/tortured/flaw characters who make for such interesting subjects.
I have a working theory that any character can be interesting…mostly. The major split comes from the degree to which the author/director/whatever allows reality, consequence, or plain bad luck to affect their precious.
Which I suppose is a roundabout way of saying I’m okay with our hero surviving an encounter in which he finds himself outnumbered and outgunned. But when the shooting stops, some of blood he’s wearing better belong to him.
JimC says
Well said, amigo.
Matthew says
Well, it’s not unknown for a single man to go up against incredible odds and survive or even triumph. Audie Murphy won his Medal of Honor in a battle so extraordinary that they had to tone it down for the movie. Jonathan R. Davis shot it out with around a dozen men. There was a dentist who served in the Pacific during WWII who at one time held off the Japanese army while not actually being a combat soldier.
J.F. Bell says
Didn’t say they couldn’t win. Hell, everybody loves a story where the hero beats the impossible. Just seems odd when there’s no real price – and in that regard, Murphy paid it prior, paid it again one day from a burning tank destroyer, and pretty well wound up paying for it the rest of his life.
If said victory came easy and cost nothing…is it really a victory?
Matthew says
True.
I noticed that one of the differences between Ian Fleming’s James Bond’s novels and the movies was that the movie bond after a mission would put on a tuxedo and go to a party. Fleming’s Bond ended up in a hospital, particularly after Doctor No.
lane batot says
Okay, it was YOU GUYS that drug critter subjects into this, provoking me to ramble on–I was TRYING to stay out of nit-picking human-centric symbolism of “the land of wolves”(GREAT photo, though–well illustrates how, under that thick pelt, wolves are built far more like sighthounds/greyhounds than the huskies they are usually most compared with)–but ye got my hackles up a bit! First, on the “Eastern Coyote” that indeed IS some percentage wolf now–what I call the “new red wolves”(which I am vilified for by the red wolf purists), but is more and more commonly called the “coywolf”–that PBS special is titled “Meet The Coywolf”(I have a dvd copy, geek that I am), and you can watch it on Youtube, too–great special. Watch it to learn and admire, rather than fear this new(?) canine living amongst us here in the East. Not to be trifled with? Just like gray wolves, the former red wolves, and coyotes, not to be worried much about actually, just as they never have been(except under specific, unusual circumstances, which I’d be happy to harangue about!)–unless they have rabies, say, and then yer own dog will attack you! Or perhaps if you have livestock–but even the livestock depredations get exaggerated all out of proportion with reality most of the time(but there are exceptions). Worrying about coywolves or coyotes is generally a grand waste of time and unnecessary stress you’d be better served to save for dealing with other humans. About the only people ever attacked are overly urbanized folk who no longer know how to sensibly act around animals of ANY kind, and unattended toddlers whose parents are some of those overly urbanized folk who inadvertantly act like prey….to be continued….
lane batot says
…..the book mentioned above by Barry Lopez is the SPLENDID, very readable classic, “Of Wolves And Men”–an interesting view on wolves as it gets equally into Native American views, as opposed to European–two very different sets of cultures, with entirely different views of the wolf. Just goes to show how much people can be blindly influenced by whatever culture they are part of, regardless of FACTS. I have camped in “the land of wolves”, and live now with “coywolves” trotting across my property regularly(I see their tracks in our rare snows, but rarely see them. Find scat and scratch marks. Occaisionally catch a glimpse, or hear them howl–music to my ears!!!), and I tell you, I feel far safer amongst them than “in the land of men”! Like a Canadian rancher I helped interview while on a gray wolf recovery course I took as a college student out of the University Of Montana, way back in 1982, when U. S. recovery was still just a dream(but that the wolves were ALREADY starting to fulfill on their own, if just left to their own devices–but it would have taken much longer….), after going up into Alberta to track wolves where they were populous, and finding most of the sign on a Hereford cow ranch(hence the interview with the rancher) who made the comment as to how American ranchers, who carry on so about wolf depredations, were “pussies about wolves!”(a great Frontier Partisans quote, in my opinion!)…..to be continued…..
lane batot says
…..and YES, cougars(mountain lions, pumas, panthers, painters, catamounts, screamers–more colloquial call names than any other animal, according to that Guiness book–but all the SAME critter) are most assuredly showing back up in the East–quite a few DOCUMENTED incidents, with DNA proof(that they are not escaped captives–they can tell by DNA now which specific wild population these cougars are coming from!), including the AMAZING epic journey of one cougar from South Dakota(a documented individual) to end up, alas, hit by an SUV on a highway in Conneticut–all documented(there’s that word again) in a SUPERB book by Will Stoltzenburg titled “Heart Of A Lion”. A great website(the cougar network) will show you on their map just how,where, and when things are happening in this marvelous phenomenon(marvelous to a critter geek like me, biased from having raised some cougar kittens by hand in the zoo I now work at, perhaps!).What true Frontier Partisan does not thrill at ANY representation of the wild returning to claim it’s own? Okay, gotta give my right index finger a rest now…..
lane batot says
…..the nub has had a breather, if short, and MUST continue pecking! I certainly understand that the comment above about running with wolves, and whether or not one can maintain a sense of right and wrong is about HUMAN symbolism, but comparing murderous, treacherous human criminals as “wolves” is just, just, sooooooo inaccurate! It is WRONG in and of itself! And is why modern human cultures(especially European-descended ones) continue to have this warped, exaggerated, NEGATIVE view of wolves! I DID run with wolves for decades(well, correction–wolf hybrids,meaning wolf/dog crosses, who have the inaccurate reputation of being MORE treacherous!), in a marvelous wild forested territory where I lived in the Southern Appalachians on the Tennessee/N.C. border, and I learned more about respect, faithfulness, dependability, and deep. DEEP love from them than I have EVER from ANY of my own species(excepting immediate family–my parents were/are SAINTS!). I have been VILIFIED for keeping those extremely politically incorrect wolf-hybrids(even though they were all rescues of a sort that would have had NO life had I not taken them in), and many such judgemental(what I consider just “mental”) folks still get outraged that I REFUSE to acknowledge how WRONG I was to do so; but no frikkin’ way in hell am I going to betray the memories(and spirits) of some of the best friends I ever had, who were faithful to me to their last breaths in old age, with whom I spent the best years of my young manhood roaming wild and freer than most folks can even DREAM about being anymore. So YES, running with REAL wolves(or crosses) that you have a positive relation with, will teach you more about what’s REALLY right and wrong than any life you can have in the wasichu’s cities! Comparing frikkin’ drug dealing bass-turds helping to destroy society with some of the noblest creatures on the planet—-AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!
JimC says
Well that’s one metaphor that has been killed deader than hell.
Well done, Lane.
lane batot says
Well, alas, maybe(?), but only on this blog. For awhile. No way will it make a dent in the centuries worth of ignorance, prejudice and persecution still deeply entrenched in our modern day Euro-centricly dominated culture……
wayne says
cougarnet.org is the website to which Lane refers and it is the best source for clearing up confusion and rumors about cougars and their current range in the U.S. This is a verified by state game agencies and wildlife biologists information source with no gossip or fantasy. Cougars are spreading back to the east. If it wasn’t for the Mississippi River they’d probably be here already in greater numbers. Two have been verified in Tennessee recently by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. The young South Dakota male was indeed hit by a truck in Connecticut. Biologists can identify the home range of these cougars by the minerals from the river system they grew up along, that are found in their teeth. Astounding science!
Barry Lopez is one of my all time favorites as well. After reading Of Wolves and Men, I never looked at a dog the same way again. It made me forever saddened over what humans have done to dogs by way of breeding them down into yapping, helpless, lap pets. My labs at least have enough wild dog left in them to want to kill something and eat it even if it’s just a chipmunk. They also have the wolf biological altruism to get between their “owner” and a bear, which they’ve done on several occasions. As Kipling put it, “The strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf.”
JimC says
Can’t tell you how much I enjoy the dialogue around here. Thank you all.
lane batot says
Yup, that’s THE website for cougar news–ESPECIALLY the reestablishing themselves in the East. Along with those Tennessee confirmations, another was shot out of a tree in Kentucky a coupla years back(from a western population genetically), and another shot in midstate Georgia by a deer hunter was one that somehow made it through the human gauntlet of mid-to-north Florida, and ALMOST made it to the Appalachians, where it would likely have been home free. This cat was genetically identified from the “Florida Panther” population. Whose to say others might not have already made it there? There were places I lived in the Appalachians where humans never went–plenty of game and isolation to help get a population established. LOTS of rumors and sightings abound in the Appalachians, north and south, and indeed, it is IDEAL “painter” habitat. I have personally heard that they have been confirmed in Smoky Mountains National Park(where they will have the reintroduced elk to hunt as well as plenty of white tailed deer and wild boar), but that it is just being kept quiet about, for now, by officialdom, because no one is certain if it is indeed an actual BREEDING population. But putting together all the evidence,the amazing elusiveness of these cats, it is only common sense to see if there isn’t an established breeding population yet, it is only a matter of time before there will be. And to that, I give a hearty Southern Appalachian “Yee-Haw!!!!!”
JimC says
Oregon Yee-haw! too.
lane batot says
You lucky guys never lost all yer cougars–in fact, the 3 orphaned cubs I helped hand raise were FROM Oregon! But we haven’t had an established population here in the East for over a hundred years, so it is a big(and still controversial) deal here. Cougars are perhaps(at least in North America), one of the only larger cat species actually doing well and reclaiming former ranges–and all without expensive tax-funded guvmint programs! Provide the wilderness(or at least some decent woodlots well stocked with deer) and they will come……
Paul McNamee says
Off the critter talk and back to your post’s theme of reverberations – yes.
My father drilled “Those who don’t learn from the past are doomed/destined to repeat it” into my mind from a very early age. It was one of his favorite quotes.
I think we live with reverberations that cut deeper than we even realize.
Breaker Morant says
A “Critter” story. In 1975, I was 8 years old and living where I do now. We are in western Minnesota, not that far from bear range, but it was farther away then.
I remember walking out behind the woods with a cousin in early summer and we saw an “Old Man in a Fur Coat” standing in the corn field. We got scared and ran away. Oddly enough, I don’t remember telling my folks about it-different times.
10 years later, I was helping a neighbor bale hay and he told about seeing a bear, circa 1975. The penny dropped, and I realized that my “Old Man in a Fur Coat” was a bear.
lane batot says
How funny! And perhaps you were instinctively wiser to be just as afraid of an old man in a fur coat hanging around the cornfield as you would a bear! And heck yeah, I understand WHY you wouldn’t tell your parents–a coupla good reasons! One is, they likely might just think you are making it up and ridicule you(being JUST a kid, of course), and/or the second reason–if your parents DO believe you and are alarmed, they may well confine you to the yard or the house even, for an extended time–something no habitual free-range kid wants to be restricted by!…. But now, I promise to try and return to the subject of the post for another comment–perhaps connecting it with critters and Apaches! Ha!
lane batot says
Okay, as promised, let’s see if I can connect all these conversations together about the actual subject posted…..In reflecting on the past, and it’s influence on our present and future, one has to wonder if we really have advanced morally or ethically from our pioneer ancestors. The pursuit and eradication of predatory animals(mostly because of their destruction of livestock, but sometimes as an actual danger to humans–though that tended to be more imagined than actual in North America as opposed to serious man-eating incidents as occurred–and still do–in Asia and Africa), and the virtual genocide of the Native peoples,
also viewed as an obstacle to “progress”–did it really improve our safety and make our quality of life better in the end? Or did we just trade one set of problems for an even more horrendous, complicated quagmire. Did eliminating raiding Apaches make people safer along the border, or are they more at risk now with criminals(usually drug-driven) robbing and killing them in their homes(and that purty much nationwide), or the violence and murder and corruption that is part-and-parcel of the drug trade? Damn, give me a few cattle killing grizzlies, or sheep-eating wolves and coyotes, or even a few sporadic Apache raids any day. But there is this pervading MYTH that somehow we are more advanced and civilized and better off for having eradicated those potential threats, while blithely ignoring what they have been replaced by…..
Fletcher Vredenburgh says
Re:rewilding. Staten Island, where for over a century the only significant wildlife were opossums and raccoons, is now overrun by deer and has seen the return of skunks, foxes, beavers, otters, and some coyotes.
Matthew says
There have been bear sightings in my town, which while not a big city is definitely not in the isolated wilderness. Mother nature is a tough old bitch.