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Jeremiah Johnson Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 29 Reviews)

The way that you wander is the way you choose, the day you tarry is the day you lose
Jeremiah Johnson has always been one of my favorite films and one that comes highly recommended.

Redford has teamed with Director Sydney Pollack on several projects (This Property is Condemned, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, Out of Africa and The Electric Horseman- all recommended), and their collaborations have always delivered interesting, intelligent and diverse work. Jeremiah Johnson is the most personal one of them all, I think. It offers something very different.

There is a peaceful, quiet quality to the feeling in this film- one very much like the peace that Johnson is seeking in its beginnings as he retreats from `civilized life' to find a new way in the mountains. The scenic beauty, John Rubenstein and Tim McIntyre's music and songs, the honest portrayal of frontier life and its depictions of the Crow and Blackfoot Indian communities. They all give it a flavor all its own.

Redford's portrayal of Johnson is some of the best work he has ever committed to film. He moves through the naïve beginnings the man faces as he must learn to survive, through the unfolding truths the land, the Indians, the Old Man and the quickly created family he is offered, to the hurt and pain it all leads to when he inadvertently offers the wrong help in the wrong way. Redford's performance is seamless as he goes from the naïve, hopeful beginnings to the jaded, worn warrior by its end. It's a role that demanded depth and he digs for it here.

This isn't a film that one can categorize (thankfully) but I feel it's more historical in nature than a western or action piece. And although it may not be a complete essay on the real Jeremiah Johnson's life and times, it seems a well thought out one on what it was like for the men and women of these times. The struggles, the confusion- the clash of cultures in their bid to survive and prosper- the peace, the violence and the aftermath of it all.

There is humor, beauty, depth and character to the film and it is definitely one you can buy for your own personal library.


Good story; Great setting
Very entertaining with great scenery. Liked every moment. One of Redford's best, in my opinion. Spectactular scenery, well acted on all fronts.

starkly beautiful
There is a poetry to this movie that has stayed with me - from the first time I ever saw it, when it first came out. From the haunting strains of Indian flutes as we first see the ferry bringing Jeremiah to the first stop in his new life - a trading post outfitting those intrepid or crazy enough to disappear into the wild - to the end, when he has weathered more than anyone today probably could survive, we are absorbed into a world that will never be possible again. Trappers routinely sleep in deep snow without tents and without freezing to death; a mountain man, mauled by a bear and incapacitated, calmly writes out his last will and testament, leaving his rifle to "whutever finds it - Lord hope it be a White man", and freezes to a tree; another mountain man shaves his head to prevent himself being scalped.

This film deserves classic status. Even the language used herein is measured and syntaxed to approximate the way the English language was spoken in the 1830s, and its exact and proper nature is almost a dialect of its own. I nearly likened it to Elizabethan, but that's obviously wrong; it's just that the flavour of the speech is like watching a play in some respects.

There isn't, actually, a LOT of dialog; enough for the drama to be established, and certainly enough when required; but the story is the man, who is alone more often than not. Jeremiah Johnson, a youngish man at the start of the story, suffers some never-explained falling-out with civilization and literally heads to the hills, with no wilderness skills but plenty of nerve. He is having a rough go of it - his ineptitude earns him a bye from a Crow warrior, who observes his pathetic attempts at fishing and either is too amused or too disgusted (or both) to deal harshly with the intruder into his territory - until he is rescued shortly before starving to death by a crusty old mountain man out looking for "griz". The older man takes Jeremiah into his cabin and instructs him on all aspects of being a mountain man, and having learned well, Jeremiah goes out on his own.

This movie is based on real people; the trader Jeremiah sees at the beginning, Roubideau, actually had a post - I've been to the spot of at least one of his stores, and it's remote now; I can't imagine how vulnerable people felt then, when there was real danger of disaster at such places. Jeremiah Johnson was created on a man called "Liver-Eating" Johnson, a real person who took it out on the Crow Nation for killing his wife by - you guessed it - supposedly killing Crow warriors and eating their livers. In this movie, the battle is joined one warrior at a time.

"Lucky they're Crow," Del Gue, another mountain man, says after a nighttime encounter. "Apache's 'd send 50 at once".

My theatre teacher in college used Robert Redford as an example of an actor who uses facial expression in lieu of verbal extrapolation in acting, and it is especially apparent here, with so little dialog in the first place. He is aided in this by the fact that two of his closest companions are a mute boy and a woman who speaks no English; he learns by osmosis to communicate nonverbally, to a large extent. The few others he encounters in his wanderings are the larger-than-life mountain men, a crazy woman - mother of the mute boy, she and he are the only survivors of an Indian attack on the family; she ultimately forces Jeremiah to take the boy with him when he happens upon their cabin - and a troop of cavalrymen who prove to be his undoing.

The movie in the first part is fairly straightforward; Jeremiah becomes a mountain man, establishes alliances with other mountain men and with some Indian tribes (including, at first, the same Crow warrior who saw his attempts at fishing early on) and even marries into the Flathead tribe, and builds a cabin on the Musselshell River, in the interests of living there in harmony with the native population. Along comes the cavalry, strongarming him into guiding them to the wagon train. This angers the Crow Nation,who resent the intrusion of white militia in their territory, and the last half of the movie deals with Jeremiah's one-man war with them after they kill his wife and the mute boy in his absence.

A lot of this movie is the scenery, which was at least partially filmed on Redford's ranch (one way to keep expenses down). There is one scene of him chopping down a tree - I do not think I have ever seen a sky so blue. You can nearly smell the pine needles as you watch; feel the cold; taste the sweetness of the wild water. During one of the one-on-one battles with a warrior, the sound of an elk trumpeting in the distance brings an eerie accent to the scene.

I come back to this movie again and again. It is a beautiful homage to an indomitable spirit, done in a drop-dead gorgeous natural setting. Unforgettable.

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