VideoRichard Slotkin, at the conclusion of his magisterial three-volume study of the West in the American imagination, notes that the western, appearances to the contrary, doesn’t have a fixed ideological meaning. This puts the movie in a state of contradiction with itself, like nearly every other good western and, for that matter, like the United States of America. And he hates Indians with a righteous purity that is shocking to contemplate now but was hardly abnormal in those days. In general, those few white people who speak up in the movie against white brutality are viewed with contempt, even as the agents of that brutality are offered a chance at redemption. The moral economy of “Hostiles” dictates that only those who have made war can participate in the regenerative violence that leads toward peace.

Source: New York Times December 21, 2017 14:26 UTC