Jeremiah Johnson made his way into the mountains
Bettin' on forgettin' all the troubles that he knew
The trail was wide and narrow
And the eagle or the sparrow
Showed the path he was to follow as they flew.

A little while I go, in response to the claim that Unforgiven is best American film ever made – I claimed that the truth actually was Jeremiah Johnson.

Since then I have been nibbling and tweaking a blog that made the case for Jeremiah Johnson.  As with some many of many of my blogs, this one quickly spiraled out of control as I tried to captured all of the tangents that emerged in my mind.

One of these tangents is the question “what constitutes an American film?”  Unlike the novel, where one has the nationality of the singular author to consider, the film is a collaborative effort, involving actors, screenwriter, director, producer, film editor, director of photography, and the whole crew.  If everyone but the director is non-American, is it an American film?  If everyone but the director American, is it an American film?  Does it matter if the screenwriter is American, or if there are more than one screenwriter that one or more is non-American?  Does it need to be shot in America? Or about America and Americans?  Could a group of Americans make a film about the Katyn massacre and still be considered for the greatest American film?

I don't have an answer to the question, and even if we could all agree on what constitutes an American film, we probably couldn't completely agree on what criteria we should use to determine the greatest.  And if we could agree on the criteria, we would devolve into name calling as we try to determine how much weight to give each criterion.  It just becomes like people arguing who is the greatest American athlete (who of course was Wa-Tho-Huk)

One of those criterion, however, that I believe needs to be given significant weight is the extent to which the film is able to capture the American psyche. (I particularly like the word "psyche" since it connotates both spirit / soul and from the psychiatric point of view, the mind functioning as the center of thought, emotion, and behavior and consciously or unconsciously adjusting or mediating the body's responses to the social and physical environment.)  With this criterion, one would say that if one gave this film to someone else, he or she could would get an understanding of what constitutes the American soul and mind better than any other film.

It would not only show the significant facets of that pysche regardless of whether we share them with those who are not American (including touching on our shared humanity), but also those particular facets of our psyche that differentiates Americans from non-Americans.  It is this latter quality which lends the Western in American film a particular edge, since its experience of westward expansion is particularly unique (Canada has something similar, but its westward expansion was not the same in the way that it unfolded).

Of course this is where every film will inevitably fail, since no one film could possibly capture the entirety of American psyche with all of its diversity.  Just considering the Big Three: Class, Race and Gender,  no film could withstand a scrutiny of whether it was able to capture the particulars of all the various American perspectives. 

One of most common criticisms would easily be that not only that it comes from white male perspective, but that it also reinforces the white patriarchy.  Jeremiah Johnson would be not different.  One could make the case, however, that the American experience is greatly defined by that white patriarchy, and any film which seeks the title of greatest American film would have to in some way address it.

Now we get into that realm of whether the great film should not only reflect this reality, but also take some explicit stand against it.  Another tangent for another day.  As would be the tangent regarding Manifest Destiny and America, which any great Western will inevitably address.

In the interest of keeping this blog to less than 500 pages, I decided to keep it to one of those facets of the American psyche which I think haunts us as well as bless us: the romanticizing and embracing of the individual.

Politically speaking, if there is one thing that elements of the far right and the far left find themselves agreeing upon it is the superiority of the individual.  On the blogosphere, the protection of civil liberties against the encroachment of the government can make for some interesting bedfellows.  Those on the left and right can be seen standing up and speaking in the right for a person to be who they are, to live and let live.  In this way, Alaska can be thought of being one of the most liberal places in the country.  

Which brings me back to Jeremiah Johnson.  For those not familiar with the basic plot line, Jeremiah Johnson is a story of a man who turns his back on the civilization and heads to mountains.  He of course doesn't completely leave it behind, since he is looking for "bear, beaver and other critters worth cash for trapping."  In this way the film, wittingly or not, captures the entrepreneurial spirit of America. This captures the facet of the American psyche found predominantly among those on the political right where the capitalist individual is embraced.  Even the mountain man was a creature of the free market.  (The film also brings up the phenomenon of overtrapping, and thereby brings with it the impact of man on the environment).

But a significant point here is that Jeremiah Johnson reflects that facet of the American psyche where the individual man (and here I am including the term "man" in the sense of gender*) makes his way in the world, carves out and makes his own success through his own skills and character.  (Another tangent: the thread of Predestination in the American psyche).

(*in terms of reflecting the American psyche, it scores points by the fact that women were regulated to minor roles.  The two women who had significant minor roles were the one who goes insane with grief after her family is massacred and leaves her only remaining son to the care of Johnson, and the Swan -- the "squaw" given to him by her father a Flathead chief -- who is later massacred along with the boy in redistribution for his actions.) 

(the image above is from the beginning the film when Jeremiah enters the trading camp to get supplies.  Another tangent is the American experience with war.  Jeremiah apparently went through the Mexican War and it is this that added to the "troubles" he knew.  The film was released in 1972, so the whole topic of the Vietnam War's impact on the American psyche comes into play here.)

Jeremiah begins as a greenhorn and through his persistence and determination (along with a little luck, which undermines the notion of Predestination), he survives.

He also has a little help from his friends.  Such as he gets in the beginning from the old and wise mountainman "Bear Claw" Chris Lapp (played by Wil Greer). 

And to make a really long blog a little shorter, I would add that what so many on the right side of politics would add, he did it with no government hand out.

Right now we are having a showdown in Washington D.C. over the role of government in the lives of America.  Terms like "debt ceiling" and "debt crisis" are being used, but what is at stake is a determination of where the individual is dependent on the village and where one has to count on some luck and a litle help from his or her friends.

Even though all in all Jeremiah Johnson is considered a film with a liberal slant, it exposes that facet of American society -- its romanticizing and glorification of the individual -- that makes it a contender for the greatest American film.

To take it a step further, the film captures the sentiment of individualism captured in the phrase: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

In the end the film shows happiness is allusive, liberty comes with a price, and life is tenuous and transitory.  All the person can count on is, well, himself as forces of man and Nature descend upon one's self.  Just how much grit (speaking of another western) one has will determine the outcome.  Regardless of how things turn out, it is up to the individual.

The ending of the film captures this sentiment through the "wordless encounter with Paints-His-Shirt-Red (Joaquín Martínez), Johnson's avowed enemy since mid-film and the presumptive force behind the attacks on Johnson. Several hundred yards apart, Johnson reaches for his rifle for what he thinks will be a final duel, but Paints-His-Shirt-Red raises his arm, open-palmed, in a gesture of peace that Johnson returns, closing the film." (from Wikipedia)

(on an interesting side note, or at least interesting to me, the ambiguous ending to the film was the product of Redford's mind.  According to Emanuel Levy*"initially, Pollack envisioned an ending in which Jeremiah freezes to death, a more logical resolution. But Redford opted for a more ambivalent ending, claiming that the viewers should make up their own minds." Again with the individualism.*Levy gives an interesting political take on Jeremiah Johnson).

As the end of the ballard of Jeremiah Johnson ends:

The way that you wander is the way that you choose,
The day that you tarry is the day that you lose.
Sunshine or thunder, a man will always wonder.
Where the fair wind blows.
An Indian says you search in vain for what you cannot find.
He says you'll find a thousand ways for runnin' down your time.
An Indian didn't scream it, he said it in a song,
And he's never been known to be wrong.
He's never been known to be wrong.

Yes we do spend a thousand ways for runnin' down our time, including going to the movies.  Deciding what the greatest American or whatever film is ultimately is a personal decision.  I was eight years old when I saw Jeremiah Johnson in the movie theater.  It was the second film I saw in the theater that I would call not a kiddie film and I was taken aback in large part by finally seeing a realistic depiction of Native Americans.  I was enthralled with Native Americans (in part because I am 1/16th Native American - my great-great-grandmother was "squaw" similar to Swan) and had a poster of Chief Joseph on my wall.  He was one of my heroes.

Next to that poster was the poster of the Belgium Roger DeCoster.

I bring this up because the first non-kiddie movie I saw in the theater was On Any Sunday, the 1971 documentary on motocycle riding in America by Bruce Brown who made the surfing documentary Endless Summer.  By clicking on the link to IMDb, one can watch the whole film, which I did this afternoon.  I hadn't seen the full film since that day I watched it with my brother and father in the theater.

In it's own way On Any Sunday captures America as better as any film, including the whole individualism as well as the white patriarchy with a conservative bent (including a prominent role of Steve McQueen, the gun-carrying conservative wife-beater). My own experience growing up in the white suburbs of southern California going to the Suzuki dealership on a Saturday afternoon with my dad and brother (yes, again mom is unseen) sums up a part of the America so many see disappearing.

There was nothing about the village when I kick started that Suzuki 75cc as a kid (yes, DeCoster rode Suzuki - and yes I would say my first emotional attachment to a corporation to the extent I would wear the logo on my clothing was to Suzuki) and took to the trails.  It was about me and my motorcycle.  I am after all a (white, male) American.

As one might say, I don't want no pickle.