Dull as dish water. No wait. Duller. I was so utterly bored that I started studying the patterns on my ceiling - which doesn't have any patterns. Damn!! I dunno... maybe one needs to be comatose to enjoy this thing. Unfortunately I'm a guy who yearns for a little excitement every now and then. The truth of the matter is that I really wanted to like this film. The theme of man going into nature I found appealing - I really loved INTO THE WILD (one of my favorite films from 2007) - but here I was just bored witless. Sure the on-location shooting in Utah was nice - loved the snow, the mountains, the valleys, the desert, etc. Redford was okay although I always saw him as more of a movie star than an actor in every role he played. I actually thought that Will Geer and Stefan Gierasch gave the more memorable performances here. But all this is a moot point because the whole affair is so dreadfully dull and pointless. Man meets some good Indians, man meets some bad Indians, man marries a good Indian, man wanders around the solitary landscape, man builds a house, bad Indians destroy said house, man wanders some more, etc. And all done with minimum dialogue. For large swathes of this film you feel like you're watching a silent movie. And none of what I saw I could engage in. I just flat out didn't care. I remember in the past thinking DANCES WITH WOLVES was boring but compared to this WOLVES is an outright adrenaline rush! Sydney Pollock really divides me - at times he can create very good stuff like THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR and THE YAKUZA and at other times he gives me coma-inducing stuff like this and OUT OF Africa. Still... the absence of Meryl Streep means that this one gets an extra point. Otherwise it may have been a 1/10. And that, of course, is PHANTOM MENACE territory. Thou shalt not enter.
Review of Jeremiah Johnson
Jeremiah Johnson
(1972)
Some nice scenery aside... seriously... can it get any duller??
15 December 2011