University of Virginia Library

CINEMA

Quiet Mr. Johnson Succumbs To 'Marrow Of World'

By CAROLYN LEWIS

In this new Sydney Pollack
production Jeremiah Johnson,
the familiar theme of man in
nature is laboriously studied.
The story concerns a young
man's progression from inept
trapper and hunter to a
legendary mountain man
respected in both the white
and Indian societies.

It is only after a period of
advantageous apprenticeship
with Bearclaws, an old
Mountain man who hunts the
"Grizzly", (played marvelously
by Will Geer), that Jeremiah
obtains a workable relationship
with nature and that the
building of his legend can
proceed.

Redford portrays in his
usual Robert Redford style
(which typically remains
unvaried from film to film)
the wandering mountain man
Jeremiah searches in the
isolation of nature for identity
and peace.

The director, Sydney
Pollack, develops this struggle
by his heavy reliance on long
shots which reveals the man's
insignificance in the face of the
towering Rocky Mountain
landscape. His limited dialogue
also established the emphasis
upon man's communication
with nature.

Perhaps in accord with the
film's concerns, there is little
verbal communication at all in
the script. The mountains
themselves serve as a
protagonist, only slightly more
silent than the actors.

Jeremiah's Indian wife
speaks only French, and his
adopted son has refused to
utter a word since he witnessed
the massacre of his family.
Jeremiah's world is a silent one
which is only occasionally
interrupted.

He and his family maintain
an equilibrium with nature.
From it he draws his identity,
defined in terms of his
physical surroundings, rather
than societal morays. This
detachment is underscored as
he off-handedly inquires of a
soldier if the Spanish-American
War is over, and if so who had
won. He is unaffected by
society, and when he does
accept its influence, it is
predictably a destructive force.
He finally realizes that his only
domain is the mountains–"the
marrow of the world."

But mountain man
Jeremiah Johnson is not the
only isolationist of this film.
The director has seen fit to
ignore any addition of a
complication or controversy to
his story. Many obvious
questions are left unexplored.
The challenge of the settlers to
the Indians and to the future
of this un-scarred landscape is
broached but never
investigated.

The result is a film whose
only justification is in its
beautiful and awesome Rocky
Mountain panoramas. One
would expect or at least hope
for more from Mr. Pollack and
Mr. Redford.

(Now at the Paramount)

Robert Redford As Jeremiah:

Man In Nature... Again