Now that Jeremiah Johnson <\/em>is streaming on HBO Max<\/a>, we can all put that gif in context, thank goodness, and the real surprise is what a throwaway moment it is \u2013 it shows up right around an hour into the movie, as part of a montage of our hero becoming comfortable and happy with the life he\u2019s made for himself, and the unlikely, makeshift family he shares it with. How that image because so ubiquitous is a topic for another time, but if it gets people to watch this lovely frontier adventure, well, all the better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It opens with an overture, rousing music over still image of the man silhouetted against the vast landscape; there\u2019s also an intermission, two touches usually reserved for much longer, \u201cepic\u201d pictures of the 1950s and 1960s. Jeremiah Johnson <\/em>clocks in at a trim 115 minutes, though, so these devices aren\u2019t serving a practical function. Instead, they\u2019re markers, director Sydney Pollack\u2019s way of tipping hit hat at the classical tradition he\u2019s working in here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHis name was Jeremiah Johnson, and they say he wanted to be a mountain man,\u201d intones the opening narrator. \u201cNobody knows whereabouts he come from, and it didn\u2019t seem to matter much.\u201d When we meet him, he\u2019s clean-shaven, wearing an Army cap, and he looks like a tenderfoot \u2013 and he is, as evidenced by his first, clumsy attempts at hunting, fishing, and building a fire. Those scenes prompt giggles, but they\u2019re not just jokes, or even points of an evolution; we\u2019re struck by his determination<\/em>, by how set he is on learning these skills and becoming this new version of himself, no matter how long it takes to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That stubbornness and dedication to long-set notions of masculinity and self-reliance are the clearest indications of the footprint of co-scenarist John Milius. It was one of the first produced screenplays by the famously gregarious and politically conservative writer\/director, but his voice and style are already firmly in place, and like his next \u201870s Western, John Huston\u2019s Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean<\/em>, it\u2019s the best version of his chest-thumping masculinity: one that has a sense of humor about itself. Jeremiah Johnson<\/em>\u2019s finest quality is its delightful eccentricity \u2013 bizarre characters, colorful colloquialisms, dark humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, like many of the \u201crevisionist\u201d Westerns of the late \u201860s and 1970s, it eschews earlier oaters soft-peddling of the brutality of the West. Some of this was merely the era; in those pre-MPAA rating days, there was only so much blood and violence filmmakers could <\/em>show. But this was also part and parcel of the New Hollywood ethos, revisiting and demystifying beloved cinematic genres and forms, and emphasizing the rot that was always lurking under their surfaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of Jeremiah Johnson<\/em>, this creates compelling tension \u2013 because Milius is <\/em>a conservative, so these new-ish ideas are at war with the traditionalism of his narrative. The makeshift family he\u2019s nodding at in that ubiquitous image is an orphaned boy who doesn\u2019t speak, and Native American wife who can\u2019t speak English, and though these peculiar connections are initially played for laughs, a quiet, kind affection develops between them. But happiness is always fleeting in a movie like this; when Johnson (under duress) accompanies a Calvary troop on a rescue mission that takes them across a sacred Crow burial ground, the Crow kill his family in retaliation. He grieves (the potent combination of anger and grief, rendered in a series of brief but powerful close-ups, marks some of Redford\u2019s finest acting in the picture), and then he sets out for revenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The picture\u2019s swing into that mold is something of a disappointment, because such single-mindedness of purpose eliminates the enjoyable detours and sidebars of the first half. And while it\u2019s effective \u2013 the violence lands with blunt force \u2013 it also makes the picture oddly messy, with Milius\u2019s \u201ckill the savages\u201d messaging at odds with the gentler revisionist perspective found elsewhere in the script (perhaps in the contributions of credited co-writer Edward Anhalt, or the uncredited work by Pollack\u2019s frequent collaborator David Rayfiel), and in Pollack\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether that section works or not, it wraps up nicely; there\u2019s circularity to the storytelling, reuniting the character with those he met earlier in his journey, and the later interactions are noticeably bittersweet. Jeremiah Johnson<\/em> is based on both a novel (Vardis Fisher\u2019s Mountain Man<\/em>) and a non-fiction book (Raymond W. Thorp and Robert Bunker\u2019s Crow Killer<\/em>), and that sounds about right; it feels like a mixture of memory and folklore, history and mythmaking. \u201cAnd some folks say \/ he\u2019s up there still,\u201d go the lyrics of the closing song, and to this day, they may be right. \u201cJeremiah Johnson\u201d is currently streaming on HBO Max<\/a> and available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/jj-nod-1.gif\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/jj3-scaled-1024x422.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/crookedc-01.svg\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n