Woman Walks Ahead (2018) [Blu-ray]
Biography | Drama | History | Western

Tagline: Defy your times.

The story follows Catherine Weldon, who moved from Brooklyn to the Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory to help Sioux chieftain Sitting Bull keep the land for his people. Weldon wrote letters to the federal government on behalf of Sitting Bull and lived on the land for several years with her son.

Based on true events, Woman Walks Ahead tells the story of Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain), a widowed artist from New York who, in the 1880s, traveled alone to North Dakota to paint a portrait of Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes). Her arrival at Standing Rock is welcomed with open hostility by a US Army officer (Sam Rockwell), who has stationed troops around the Lakota reservation to undermine Native American claims to the land. As Catherine and Sitting Bull grow closer, and as their friendship-and his life-are threatened by imperious government forces, Catherine must contend with the violence that underlies her position.

Storyline: Catherine Weldon, a portrait painter from 1890s Brooklyn, travels to Dakota to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull and becomes embroiled in the Lakota peoples' struggle over the rights to their land.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, August 24, 2018 In a way, it's almost kind of shocking that Woman Walks Ahead didn't "connect" with audiences during its brief theatrical run, since the film would seem to offer a veritable horn of plenty for lovers of a certain kind of historically based western. The casting offers "it" actress Jessica Chastain as real life painter and activist (and some might argue proto-feminist) Caroline Weldon, a fascinating figure in her own right whom director Susanna White in a supplement included on this Blu- ray release probably rightfully laments has been consigned to being a "mere footnote" in history books in general, and in the tortured history of the Lakota in particular. Playing Lakota leader Sitting Bull is Plains Cree actor Michael Greyeyes, in a performance that really anchors this film with a certain amount of stoic dignity. And the "third wheel" (in a manner of speaking) character, Colonel Silas Grove, is enacted ably by Sam Rockwell, as he attempts to complete a treaty while also attempting to get the increasingly "resistance" minded Weldon to go back from whence she came. The film is also filled with a number of really interesting supporting performances, and the whole tale of Weldon journeying west, ostensibly to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull, but ultimately for reasons more political and even romantic, would seem to be near perfect fodder for an "epic western". And to a large degree, Woman Walks Ahead succeeds, offering jaw dropping vistas of the American West, a landscape that intentionally dwarfs the human characters moving through it, while also devoting considerable time to a tale of two disparate people who each feel disenfranchised in their own way. But Woman Walks Ahead never really hits the bullseye, to use a metaphor culled from the sort of Wild West Show that Sitting Bull himself was forced to participate in at one point in his troubled life.

There's some curious "fictionalizing" at play in Woman Walks Ahead with regard to at least the character of Weldon, as evidenced by some background research I did in preparation for writing this review, and which led me to a book which perhaps provided some spark for Steven Knight's screenplay, Eileen Pollack's 2002 biography Woman Walking Ahead: In Search of Caroline Weldon. Interestingly, instead of being a widow in mourning as the film details, Weldon was actually a divorcée, a rather rare state for a woman back in those Dark Ages, and one whose marriage evidently ended at least in part due to dalliances Weldon engaged in. There's also some data to suggest that Weldon had at least one child, and perhaps adopted another who accompanied her to the Standing Rock Reservation, two items which are missing completely from this version. I'm simply not conversant enough to know what the actual "truth" is, but it almost seems like it would have instantly offered a more complete "summary" of Weldon's feistier proclivities to have let her be a divorced woman, another example of how "trailblazing" she obviously was, though that may have been thought of as (weirdly) too "controversial" in terms of the romantic aspect (if you want to call it that) that later develops between Weldon and Sitting Bull.

As I watched this film I couldn't help but think of Joni Mitchell's really moving and beautifully written and arranged "Lakota", from what I consider to be one of her more interesting later albums, Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm, a song which features a really arresting array of imagery depicting Native American loss and mourning. (Kind of weirdly and maybe even hilariously, the song features a supposed "authentic" chant sung by "Iron Eyes Cody", a guy who evidently passed himself off successfully as Native American in both visual media and song for decades, including that now iconic "Keep America Beautiful" PSA where he shed a tear, but who reportedly turned out to be a kind of pre-Rachel Dolezal Rachel Dolezal, actually coming from Italian American heritage.) Woman Walks Ahead traffics in much the same melancholic elements, but it weaves in a number of at times almost startling vignettes. Some of these involve repeated depictions of loss of "true" Native American identity, as perhaps best exemplified by the surprisingly Native American wife of James McLaughlin (Ciarán Hinds). McLaughlin was evidently a so-called "Indian agent" in real life but is here depicted as something closer to a post commander at the Standing Rock Reservation military outpost. But even Sitting Bull himself undergoes a transformation in a way, in one scene appearing in a "western" style suit and tophat, but then "reverting" to more traditional garb, an unexpectedly moving metamorphosis.

While director White is again on record as declaiming how beautiful Chastain's "pale skin" is against the rugged backdrop that is a feature of many scenes in the film, there may be a reaction on the part of some viewers that Woman Walks Ahead is a little too "dewy" for its own good at times. The film is rich in historical detail, but seems fashioned as it goes along to become more of a Lifetime "very special event" movie that offers star-crossed lovers from different cultures never able to really address the situation imposed upon them by the societal mores of the time. The film perhaps arguably also glosses over the central "Ghost Dancing" element that led to Sitting Bull's demise, though again, there are some moving sequences that the film devotes to this particular aspect.

One admittedly tangential thing that grated on me personally was Chastain's choice of idiolect in this film. The real life Weldon was evidently born in Switzerland, but emigrated with her family to New York when she was quite young, but Chastain does a kind of weird on again, off again outer borough twang that at times struck me as a little Brooklyn, at others a little Bronx, with nothing ever sounding really spot on in any case. The fact that it's variable makes it even odder, and I have to wonder what the credited dialogue coach was offering Chastain in terms of advice (if anything). Again, this is a rather minor quibble, but it was annoying enough to me to want to mention it.

I was often quite captivated with Woman Walks Ahead, even as I often was kind of wondering why the film didn't really "reach out and touch" me more profoundly. In fact, some of the most devastating emotional content of the film for me was actually given courtesy of a brief coda documenting the horrors of Wounded Knee, accompanied by some archival photographs of the carnage. While Woman Walks Ahead is perhaps not as cathartic as some might have hoped, it's still incredibly scenic and has some very interesting elements to its story. I for one will be cheering if the accomplished work of Michael Greyeyes is remembered next year when the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominations are announced. With caveats noted, Woman Walks Ahead comes Recommended.

[CSW] -2.8- Based on sad true events set in the beautiful natural landscape of North Dakota. Most of us know how badly the American Indians were treated and yet they were never truly broken. Smallpox did the major damage and after that they didn't stand a chance but yet somehow they still managed to maintain their dignity. Two people each courageous in their own way and each fighting their own oppression, reinforce each other in a strange way. Not a love story but a courageous way of dealing with oppression that one can fall on love with.
[V4.5-A4.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box


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