I also have to disagree. The Searchers isn’t a bad movie just because the lead character is a bad person. You can make a great movie about a terrible person.
The Searchers is the greatest Western ever made. It’s the Great American Movie, about the self destructive nature of the racism that is at the heart of what it means to be an American. It’s also about sacrifice and betrayal and redemption through love. It’s about the two irreconcilable contradictions that define us as a nation: the genocide of native Americans, and the story of the anti-heros who pushed west to escape society and in doing so forged a path for society to follow them; the men whose very nature made them both essential to the survival of society, and unwelcome to live among them. (one of the many ways in which The Dark Knight is an homage to Ford).
John Ford was our Shakespeare. The Searchers is as great a work as King Lear.
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[Here’s a bit I wrote on Westerns a while back.]
I’m not a fan of Westerns, but The Searchers is a great movie. I’ve seen it a few times but always have to leave the room when the family gets massacred. I see Wayne’s character as someone who nowadays would be suffering from PTSD, and the idea of killing Debbie doesn’t seem far fetched given the times and Wayne’s mental health.
The conceit of which fiction? Captivity fiction or Westerns?
The Searchers was based loosely on the life of Cynthia Ann Parker - captured by the Comanche at about 9, then captured by the Texas Rangers at about 35 and never returned to her family, the Comanche.