Jeremiah Johnson

Jeremiah Johnson is a film about life in the American mountains in the era of colonisation, and the people who sought to eek out an existence amidst nature, turning their back on civilisation. In this film Robert Redford stars as the titular protagonist who faces the perils of the unconquered West, learning the harsh ways and realities of surviving as a trapper in the bucolic terrain of North America in the 1850s. Once ensconced in the wild Johnson befriends fellow mountaineers, marries a Native American woman and adopts a mute son, (the survivor of a massacre), whilst settling into family life. Johnson finds himself increasingly at odds with his original pacifist intentions and as a result of a series of incidents, is driven to murderous encounters with the native Indians. Shot in Utah the film looks spectacular and addresses issues such as the significance of the land to Native American Indians as well as depicting the settlers’ endeavours to create a life in a savage physical environment. “Jeremiah Johnson” is a revisionist Western that along with “McCabe and Mrs Miller” (Altman, 1971) presents the pioneer life as a brutal and compromising struggle of humankind against nature and each other.