The Searchers

Better Late than never.

I Have to say I am never really a fan of westerns, they are always just a tad slow paced for me to keep my attention focused on it for longer than an hour.

I found the searchers entertaining in alot of ways, but equally bland in others. I found the storyline to be the typical western of fighting the bad indian people. This to me just rang of every other western I have seen, I was just about to throw in the towel when I realised I was actually enjoying the film.

Maybe this is down to the calibre of actor involved in this one, or maybe its down to John Fords style of the movie. But something made this stick out alot from the crowd of bland westerns I have seen in the past. I felt that the Searchers had alot more obvious beets to the film than most other westerns, It felt like it was actually going somewhere other than shooting those pesky indians.

This is undoubtedly down to the premise of them searching for someone, it gave the plot alot of drive and gave the story somewhere to go and to ultimately resolve itself. This kept my attention more focused on what was going on and if they would ever find the little girl.

It didn't hurt that visually the film was brilliant, every shot seemed way ahead of its time, and for parts you could have showed me and told me its a film being released next year. After all the desert is a bland and boring place to be, to make the place look visually nice to look at was a triumph.

As with Andy's classes surrounding framing, deep focus and subtle hidden visual messages, I loved how that in the searchers each shot was well though out in terms of framing and what was being shown. Every inch of very shot had its purpose and convade in some form more story and depth to what was happening.

At times it did feel like it was settling back into the traditional cowboy film and slowing down to a near stop, this happened from time to time through-out the movie. But not nearly enough to distract from all the other good points the film was doing.

As with the point Murdo made on his blog, the ending did seem a tad off. The little girl going from the loyal indian to suddenly releasing she in-fact wants saved seemed to be out of place, it took me out of the movie for a moment. I'm not sure what quite was the point in that, maybe there was a hidden under-tone which I didn't quite pick up on.

Over-all a good watch I felt, interesting and actually got some thought provoking points across. Kept me interested from start to finish which no other cowboy western film has managed to do with me as of yet.