By Jeremy Ambrose

Of all film genres, the Western stands out to me as the genre par excellence. What other genre is defined by a physical location, rather than being a descriptor of how the film will make you feel? Comedy, tragedy, fantasy, horror; all these indicate whether we will laugh, cry, be awed or be frightened. The Western, on the other hand, describes a geographical setting. It is a genre that functions almost like a spiritual retreat, being a journey of man’s self-discovery, out in the wilderness. In these films we are taken out West, away from civilisation with its multifaceted masks, where humanity is stripped away, layer by layer, and finally exposed in the rawness of what it means to be human. Human desires, motives, virtues and vices are unmasked and revealed in the plainness of what they are, in their simplicity, having no other place to hide.

On a Retreat we strip away our unnecessary layers, so that we can see ourselves as we really are and find where it is we should be going. The Western does the same with the story of humanity, taking characters into the desert where they will inevitably be pushed to the extreme by the harshness of the landscape, revealing the truth of the human condition and forming the mythologies that arise from this truth. What we are left with are character types; like the good, the bad and the ugly! A mythology emerges, and with that mythology is a certain iconography. That’s why when we think Western, we immediately think of cowboys and guns, horses and saddle bags, dusty wide open spaces and rolling tumbleweed. People often have this iconography stamped upon them from a young age and so imagine that they know all about the genre, judging them to be simple and boring films. To me, that’s like seeing icons of Saints, and just because the iconography may be familiar in style, with recognisable halos and colours and postures, does that make us think that if we know one Saint, we know them all? Surely we know that while it may be the same striving for holiness we see, the form of this holiness is as diverse and unique as life itself.

The same could be said for the Western. John Ford’s The Searchers takes this familiar mythology and iconography and subverts them to delve deeper into the complexities of man. Often called the greatest of Westerns, it has all the iconography; the famous landscapes of Monumental Valley, the cowboys, lawmen, Indians, and especially the most recognisable Western icon of all time, John Wayne.

John Wayne’s all American identity of Western hero is taken and subverted to reveal something very different; the underbelly of hatred and the complexity of a man who shuns mercy. The subversion forces us to reassess our idea of what a ‘hero’ is and becomes an examination of hatred.

In our Year of Mercy film series, The Searchers stands out especially for depicting one of the most merciless antiheroes of all time. Monica Doumit reflects on this film and the different motivations behind The Searchers.