With the recent death of Robert Redford, I figured it would be appropriate to review one of his films.  However, I have already covered most of the ones with which people would be familiar.  The streaming services have been little help on this count.  The only title I had seen available was The Great Waldo Pepper (1975).  Ever hear of that one?  If you have, then you are more familiar with Redford’s career than me.  Instead, I found Jeremiah Johnson (1972).  Though I had to rent it, it was fortuitous timing for a silly reason.  Lately, my .gif of choice is a scene from this movie involving a slow zoom-in on the title character (Robert Redford), ending in a nod and a smile.  I go through these phases where I stick with one of these short clips.  Dovetailing with that is my knowledge of the events contained therein and how they might resonate with a current desire to leave civilization behind.  Much of that attitude is about me being disheartened with the current state of politics, but it is also something certain Catholics have been doing for centuries.  This and the presence of actual Catholicism all made for a satisfying viewing experience that I am happy to describe to you.

After an overture (of all things), a song tells us that Jeremiah Johnson arrives in the West after serving in the army in the 1830s, buys a .30 caliber Hawken percussion rifle, and heads into the Rocky Mountains.  He has no particular destination in mind, only to trap, hunt, and live off the land.  He had initially wanted a .50 caliber piece, but he finds one frozen to the corpse of a dead mountain man with a note leaving it to whoever locates the deceased individual.  Despite this luck, Jeremiah is proving to be less than capable of thriving in this cold and hostile environment.  Once his horse dies, he is spotted by Chris “Bear Claw” Lapp (Will Geer).  Bear Claw is a veteran of the area, though admits that most of the game (including his favorite target by which he gained his nickname) has been hunted out.  Nonetheless, he takes Jeremiah on in a sort of apprenticeship role, teaching the newcomer all the tricks of surviving in the woods.  Roughly a year goes by and Jeremiah sets out once more on his own, confident of his newfound abilities.  In the course of his meanderings, he comes upon a homestead with a woman (Allyn Ann McLerie) crying hysterically over her dead family, victims of a Native American attack.  While she is inconsolable, Jeremiah finds a boy (Josh Albee) hiding in the corner of the cabin.  She insists Jeremiah takes the lad with him while she stays to mourn.  Because the young man appears to be mute, Jeremiah decides to call his new companion Caleb.  Caleb is with Jeremiah when they encounter Del Gue (Stefan Gierasch), who has been buried in the ground with only his head above the soil.  Del had been raided by a band of Blackfoot, and against his better judgement, Jeremiah helps Del retrieve his stolen furs and horses from the Blackfoot.  Making matters worse is when Del kills a number of them in retribution, a move Jeremiah objects to because he means to live peacefully amongst the native peoples.  The fact that Del takes a few scalps does not improve matters, and he tries to pin them on Jeremiah when they encounter a group of Flatheads.  They are not pleased by the sight of the skull skin and hair, so Jeremiah attempts to placate them by offering all his furs.  A gift of such magnitude risks insult because the Flatheads always wish to be the more generous party in an exchange.  The solution they come up with is for Jeremiah to marry Swan (Delle Bolton), Chief Two-Tongues Lebeaux’s (Richard Angarola) daughter.  If that last name piques your interest, standby.  Once more, Jeremiah is resistant to the notion, but he keeps his makeshift family with him and comes to appreciate them.  As a sign of the affection he develops for Swan, he eventually shaves his thick beard when it becomes apparent that it is chafing Swan’s face.  So settled do they become that even Caleb is okay with Jeremiah leaving to go on a buffalo hunt.  Unfortunately, he has to return early when his camp is attack by a wolf pack.  Once he has healed, they are visited by a squadron of American cavalry led by Lieutenant Mulvey (Jack Colvin).  The troops are on their way to save a group of stranded settlers and ask Jeremiah to guide them to their destination.  He does not want to leave his family, but he also realizes they could cause more trouble without his assistance.  As it is, they prove troublesome anyway when one of their number, a chaplain named Reverend Lindquist (Paul Benedict) insists they ride through a Crow burial ground.  Jeremiah knows the native peoples jealously guard this sacred ground, but the lives of the settlers are put on his conscience if they are not soon reached.  His precautions go for naught when, on the way back, he senses something is amiss.  Sadly, when he makes it to his cabin, it is to find Caleb and Swan dead.  After laying their bodies in state and burning the cabin they built, he seeks out the party that had killed his family and gets bloody retribution.  He leaves one of them alive, and from then on he has to fight a Crow warrior in single combat at random moments.  Though he is badly wounded in one of these struggles, he is still wandering, having one last encounter with Del, a new group of settlers at the farm where he found Caleb, and finally Bear Claw.

Jeremiah Johnson kind of peters out from there, with a concluding song talking about how some say he is still living in the woods to this day.  He would have been 160 odd years old in 1972, but hey, the Old West was full of tall tales.  From a Christian perspective, Jeremiah can be roughly praised for being a decent human being.  His goal was to co-exist with his neighbors.  Unfortunately, he committed the sin of desecrating a holy place, which has Biblical parallels in terms of the punishment God can mete out to those guilty of such offenses.  Scripture would also not be keen on his revenge quest.  Still, these are all obvious matters, one that does not require a Christian recognize as to their negative nature.  What might be less obvious are the specifically Catholic moments in the film.  The first is when Del and Jeremiah are riding into the Flathead encampment and there is a Crucifix at the center.  I must confess to being surprised by this feature despite having fairly extensively studied the history of Catholicism in the United States.  Thankfully, the film caught me up.  In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Flatheads had come into contact with the French, who had eventually sent Catholic missionaries to them at their request.  This is a matter of historical record, but it is satisfying to see the movie get this aspect of Flathead history correct.  It also explains why Swan prays before going to bed and meals.  A further detail as to the religious milieu of the 1830s is Jeremiah’s impatience with what he calls her “religious ceremonies.”  The United States that he had escaped was one that was not devoid of Catholicism, but it was still a Faith that would have been alien to many Americans.  If there was any familiarity with so-called “papism” or “popery” as Catholicism was sometimes derogatorily referred to as, it was as a strange, even ceremonial religion with customs that would have been as foreign as anything else the Flathead did.  What would have been great for me, but less comprehensible to other viewers, is if Jeremiah had adopted a form of Catholicism.

Jeremiah Johnson’s lack of being evangelized is nearly the only mark against the film.  At the same time, I can see why many would not enjoy it.  There are long stretches of the story where it is Jeremiah, usually alone, riding through the woods.  It is also somewhat open-ended, which is usually a negative for me.  I like plots that wrap up neatly.  Nonetheless, I give it my recommendation, even if it is a little sad.