The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)10/10
When Josey Wales’s (Clint Eastwood) wife and child are killed, and farm burned, by Union soldiers (Kansas Redlegs, to be precise), he joins the Confederate army (Bill Anderson’s Missouri Bushwackers). When the war ends, he refuses to surrender, and becomes a wanted man, bent on vengeance. As he journeys, he draws to him a band of other disconnected outsiders. Directed by Client Eastwood.
The Outlaw Josey Wales is complex and layered. It has multiple levels of symbolic meaning, but is never heavy-handed—it ain’t Pale Rider, hammering its Important Meaning home.
Look at this: Josey Wales is an iconic Western hero. He poses in perfect symmetry with the landscape, with the hardened, iconic face of Clint Eastwood, he’s the best shot in the West and his only goal is vengeance. But look at this: In the end, Wales sues for peace with the local Comanche chief (the wonderful Will Sampson) and agrees, with his pursuer (John Vernon) that they will put the war behind them and give up their mutual quest.
As Lone Wattie, Chief Dan George has primary charge of busting the Western myth. When Lone Wattie pronounces something with gravity and wisdom, he is generally proven wrong. He is neither a buffoon nor a noble savage, but an aging man who wishes, ruefully, that he could live up to the white man’s image of the Indians. And he’s pretty funny, too.
Everyone in this film has images that will be busted. Kansan Granny Sarah hates Missourians, but must trust Missourian Josey Wales. Little Moonlight is marked with the Cheyenne sign of the “dirty nose,” but it means something different than it appears to. Laura Lee (Sondra Locke) is thought to be “odd” but holds her own. In wartime, everyone has painted the enemy in broad strokes. To live in peace, each person must learn to see individuals. No one says this, gives a speech about it, or even notices it, but it’s an observable part of the arc these characters take.
The theme that touched me the most when I first saw this movie was that of created families. Josey Wales draws to him a group who have nothing but their wounds and their loss. Like Josey, each has lost family, is cut off from home, and has no way of restoring his or her pre-war life. The Indians in the film are even more displaced than just being Indians would make them. By coming together and creating their own family, they can heal one another. This is a theme Eastwood will return to in myriad forms (Bronco Billy is a comedic version).
In addition to all of this, IMDb commenter A-Ron-2 points out that the movie serves as commentary on the end of the Vietnam war, an idea I had not previously explored. It is especially interesting when you learn that the Redlegs and Bushwackers fought a guerilla war, making the parallels to Vietnam even more stark.
