The Searchers was one of the most life-changing films I have ever seen. It deals with a mysticism created by John Wayne (the quintessential cowboy) who enters into a journey for a lost girl to indian tribes and brutally searches for her under the worst of landscapes, but the most beautiful from afar and from the camera's lens. Directed by one of the greatest of American directors, John Ford, the film seeps with realism rather than sappiness. There is a hardness and grit to Wayne's character that evokes a languor and an unmatched sadness with a quick hand for a gun. This is a man who is hateful because he has been injured. When Wayne mutilates the body of a dead indian to ensure his block towards the holy land, we see that he does it because of a hatred that has been implanted into his character. Wayne's cowboy lives on the plains outside of politics and rhetoric, and on those plains it is a singular gun that ensures safety or death. The complexities raised by Ford's film seeps into the American landscape of film, it shows a man who literally rides in on a horse to save a community from a dubious problem. It is the beauty of the cowboy western to have the scene where he gives a last, stoic look towards those who needed help, and then rides off, leaving the town desolate and solitary to fight for itself. Perhaps the purpose of Wayne's cowboy is to serve as an example for a community, but to show the imperfection of a figure who is supposedly immersed in goodness. A great film, and more elegiac than the most "serious" of films.
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