I hope to someday see The Searchers without crying through half of it, but I’m not there yet. I saw a lovely 35mm print of John Ford’s classic in a theater last weekend (my fourth time seeing it, I think) and was a blubbering gallon of melted ice cream when the house lights went up.
A part of me feels like the tears might blind me from a few nuances of the film’s remarkably adult takes on racism, obsession and the relationship between grizzled elders and the young. How critical can I be when I’m so swept by Ford’s harrowing and gorgeous cinematic music?
Not that the film is a cynical tear-jerker that sticks its fingers up your ass and manipulates you like a puppeteer. No, its power is in the beauty of its telling. I cry at parts that aren’t even sad. I go full Flash Flood Warning at moments of mere foreboding or levity. I ADORE the moment when Vera Miles can’t contain her smile as Jeffrey Hunter and Ken Curtis fight over her. I want to buy Hank Worden a rocking chair. I feel bad for Hunter’s accidental Comanche wife (the film’s dull-fisted treatment of that story is its biggest flaw). I think it’s a cute detail how the women, who are entrusted to raise the children and have thus taken education more seriously, are such competent readers while the near-illiterate cowboys struggle through even a simple written sentence. The horrific build-up to the film’s (unseen) pivotal slaughter is world class filmmaking. And the famous redemptive moment at the climax still lands on me like two tons of bricks.
This film hits me hard. I’m all eyes and ears for it and not much of a mouth. Don’t know if that’s wrong, but it feels right to me.