A moving saga about forgiveness
Themes of bravery, courage, endurance mark this riveting Western about cowboys and Injuns in the Old West (North America) and the need for open-mindedness and unbiasedness in order to live in harmony.
“Savages” is the term often used to describe the native Americans in this film starring Christian Bale as Army Captain Joe Blocker who, on the verge of retirement, is arm-twisted into escorting an avowed enemy, Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family from New Mexico to their ancestral land in Montana.
It’s a long, long journey and en route, they come across a woman Rosalie (Rosamund Pike) who has become unhinged by the slaughter of her family. An intense sequence showing the heart-rending killings by the hostile Commanche tribe, opens the film after a quote from D.H. Lawrence, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.”
The murderous tribe is just one of several opponents capt Blocker’s small band must contend with during their journey. Actually, the title could well apply to all of the characters who exhibit some degree of hostility until wiser counsel prevails.
A soldier, Sgt. Metz (Rory Cochrane) who once boasted about killing an Indian at a young age apologises to the Cheyennes for mistreating. But there are awful white men too; “settlers” on native American lands who express contempt and disdain for the rights of the dispossessed.
In time, Rosalie, the Indians and their colonial masters learn to trust and respect one another. Rosalie who has lost her family and the Indians who have lost their homeland, do not succumb to hatred. Blocker, deadened by the weight of complicity, learns to live again. Maybe, I should have said, love. Bale and Pike are memorable as the morose soldier and grieving widow. As is the rest of the supporting cast from Wes Studi as the Cheyenne chief to Ben Foster as the convict who hectors Bale about the genocidal past. In the end, it’s all about the need for forgiveness.