Wind River
Surrounded by expansive snowy landscape, Taylor Sheridan makes great use of the environment as a springboard for the narrative and visual poeticism in Wind River. Performances from Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen paint the film with emotional streaks that provide a humanistic angle to the stark violence in the story.
Wind River, is said to be the thematic conclusion of Sheridan’s trilogy of neo-western films, exploring the problems arising in modern American frontier. But, Sheridan’s obsession with the stoic, white masculine masochism is especially ill-fitted here.
Wind River draws our attention to the horrific violence and injustice faced by Native American women in real life but, really, this is not their story. The pre-ending titles remind the audience of the erasure of Native American Women but, ironically, the film itself is also engaging in a different form of erasure of Native Americans. There is really no reason why Renner’s character has to be white. This reliance on the “white man saves the day” narrative, in which the pain of Native American women is used as a backdrop so that the white man can come in and lecture Native Americans about pain and survival, is dangerously irresponsible. At the end of the day, it is still the white man who gets to determine the fate of the predator and achieves his definition of justice. Meanwhile, Native Americans are sidelined, deprived of their own voice, as if the white man is the only person who knows about loss, pain and survival. Considering the divide between white and Native Americans, the film’s solution of the very real issues that endanger the livelihood and well-being of Native American women is simply naive.
In fact, the film is so fixated on white male heroism that even Olsen’s FBI character plays second fiddle to Renner’s character, with her insisting that she doesn’t know anything and needs his help. While she is able to display moments of heroism on her own, it is cut short so that the male hero can “go get him” and come back to patronise her further.
(Originally posted on 21 Oct 2017 @projectunwrapped)
