Movie Review—Hostiles

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell

Hostiles. Released widely: Jan. 2018. Runtime:134 mins. MPAA Rating: R for strong violence and for language.

“The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.”--D.H. Lawrence

The sense of an ending hangs over the beginning of Hostiles (directed by Scott Cooper from his screenplay, based on a manuscript by Donald E. Stewart). In 1892 New Mexico a renegade band of Comanches nearly wipes out a family on an isolated homestead. A father is scalped and three children, including an infant in swaddling clothes, are killed along with him. Only the wife/mother, Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), survives, traumatized.

At the same time at Fort Berringer, in the territory, Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) is treating some Apache captives harshly, while looking forward to his impending retirement after a long career as a noted Indian fighter. Also at Fort Berringer, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), a Chyenne chief who battled Blocker in the past and has been confined for seven years, is dying of cancer and has asked to be allowed to return with some family members to his ancestral homeland in Montana for his last days. In effect, the traditional Native American way of life is dying out. The Indian wars came to an end with the 1890 massacre of Sioux and Cheyenne by the U.S. Cavalry at Wounded Knee, South Dakota—Blocker was there—though occasional raids by renegade bands still occur. In fact, the frontier itself as a specific area of the country is vanishing also. In 1890 the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the frontier no longer existed as a demographic category. 

Capt. Blocker seems the embodiment of that essential American soul described by D.H. Lawrence in the quote from his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923) that appears on screen at the beginning of Hostiles. Ramrod-straight, scarred, squint-eyed, scowling, Blocker almost seems to exist within a carapace of hardness, isolation, stoicism, and skill at killing. But, it would seem, the traditional breed of Indian fighter is now being dissed rather than praised as in the past. Blocker clashes over Indian policy with a liberal journalist from Connecticut (Bill Camp) and is outraged when his commanding officer (Stephen Lang) tells him that Washington, now in a more tolerant mood toward Indians, has granted Yellow Hawk's request and that Blocker is to take a squad and escort the chief and his family members to Montana. Blocker has to be threatened with court-martial before he will accept this assignment.

Shortly after leaving the fort, Blocker considers killing Yellow Hawk with a knife, but doesn't. Instead, he puts chains on the chief and his family. Later the squad comes across the burned-out Quaid homestead from the Comanche raid. Rosalie is still there and is terrified by the sight of Yellow Hawk and his family. She starts to relent, however, when the Natives treat her kindly. When the Comanches show up again and attack Blocker's group, in a brilliantly choreographed battle on horseback, Rosalie shows herself to be a formidable fighter. Yellow Hawk and his family also persuade Blocker to unchain them so that they can fight the Comanches, which they do to great effect. The renegade Comanches and the Cheyenne are hostile to each other.

Observing these developments, Blocker begins a learning process that will continue throughout the journey north. Women, as well as men, can be warriors. Native Americans are not all the same. They have differences among themselves. And vicious clashes with fur trappers, land barons, and a prisoner added to Blocker's group along the way show that whites can be villains as well as victims. “Hostiles” come in all colors and from within as well as without. 

Blocker is not inherently “hard, etc.” He reads Roman literature, says that he believes in God, praises a black soldier, respects the help from Yellow Hawk and his family, has deep regard for men who have served with him in the past, and feels romantic stirrings for Rosalie. But his past experiences have shaped him to an extent that is difficult to undo,. In some respects, he is suffering from PTSD and cognitive dissonance. After all, that white prisoner has been sentenced to hang for acts of hostility in the present that Blocker was commended for in the past! Can Blocker's learning process also become a healing process?

Scott Cooper and his cinematographer handle the changing landscape of the journey beautifully as arid scrubland yields to forested slopes and then to verdant grasslands. The score is powerful but restrained. The same might be said of the performances by Bale, Pike, and Studi, with strong support from the rest of the cast. And, of course, there are some allusions to classic Westerns. The emperor of Austria is said to have commented to Mozart that the composer's music had “too many notes.” Some may feel that Hostiles has “too many themes.” But for others these themes come together in the film's conclusion when Blocker faces a moment of existential choice. Can he “unblock”--unmelt--his soul—and begin a new life in a changing world?  

“Footnotes” to the film: (1) In Terrence Malick's The New World (2005), about the Jamestown Colony, Q'orianka Kilcher, who plays Yellow Hawk's daughter in Hostiles, played Pocahontas and Christian Bale played her white husband, John Rolfe. (2) Historians have called the 1890s a “watershed decade” because it was such a time of transition. Seven Western territories were admitted as states from 1889 to 1896. The Indian wars as major conflicts ended. The Census Bureau declared that the frontier had ceased to be. Historian Frederick Jackson Turner at the Columbian Exposition/Chicago World's Fair in 1893, celebrating the 400^th anniversary of Columbus' landings in the New World, presented his enormously influential thesis claiming that the frontier experience had shaped the American national character. (3) Scholars of American culture have often discussed several archetypes of the “American national character”:

 • The “essential American,” per D.H. Lawrence. Think Capt. Ahab or Gen. Patton and certain characters played by John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson.

 • The “Adamic American.” Brilliantly delineated by R.W.B. Lewis in his The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century. Like Adam before the Fall, sees himself as at one with God, Nature, others. If he does fall from grace, he tries to turn that development into a “fortunate fall.” Think Walt Whitman, Norman Rockwell scenes, and certain characters played by Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks. 

 • The “ugly American.” The term came into use following the popularity of William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick's novel The Ugly American (1958). In the novel the “ugly American” is actually an admirable character, but over time the term has morphed and come to refer to a rude, crude, ignorant, arrogant person. Think Archie Bunker (blue-collar version) or Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (nouveau-riche version) or the U.S. tourist complaining that the people in a foreign country are speaking a foreign language.