Film Review—“Wind River” Exploring Masculintiy: Violence and Grief

“Wind River”--Taylor Sheridan’s recently released film--is a terribly sad and beautifully-rendered reflection on masculinity, violence, and grief. Set in the harsh winter landscape of Wyoming, in the harsher physical and social context of an Indian reservation, the film dissects and then re-constructs the Wild West/Cowboys v. Indians mythos, critiquing its macho, violent masculinity and suggesting possibilities for rewriting old, devastating relationships.

At the beginning of the movie, we see Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a U.S. Fish and Wildlife ranger, dressed in white to blend in with the harsh snowy landscape, shoot and kill several wolves as they prey on a herd of sheep. He later describes his job as a hunter of predators. In the process of rounding up the dead animals, he notices something else lying on the distant frozen ground. He discovers the body of a barefoot, young, Native American woman—Natalie--daughter of friends and friend to his daughter. He offers to help the woefully understaffed tribal police and lone FBI agent sent by the feds (Elizabeth Olsen) track down Natalie’s rapist and murderer.

Cory is a modern-day cowboy, riding across the wide Western expanse of land on a snow mobile instead of a horse, but still managing animals, sporting a cowboy hat, and more at ease reading and listening to the land for signs of what happened than talking to other people. He’s a representative of the United States government, yet instead of being at odds with the Indians on the reservation, he seems more linked to them than to his fellow white people and government agents. His ex-wife--with whom he has a tense relationship--her father, whom Cory clearly respects, and their son are all Indians. Before too long, we see that the strongest bond is between Cory and Martin (Gil Birmingham), Natalie’s grieving father. He and Cory share the horrific experience of having lost teenage daughters to violence on the reservation. What Sheridan is most interested in showing his audience is this grief of fathers.

It’s not that the mothers don’t grieve. The two very brief glimpses into Natalie’s mother’s world are heartbreaking: in one, she sits alone in her room, moaning in heartbreak, as she cuts herself; in the other, she is deeply sleeping on the bed that is strewn with scrap books and photos of her lost daughter. Cory’s ex-wife, too, clearly mourns her child. The girl’s picture is prominent on the fireplace; she won’t even go to the reservation anymore and doesn’t like their son doing so, even to visit his grandparents. But, this is not the mothers’ story. Neither is developed as a character, nor on screen much. This story is Cory’s. And Martin’s. Two grieving fathers who don’t shy away from the emotions in which the deaths of their daughters engulf them.

When we first see Martin, he is being questioned by Jane, the young FBI agent dispatched from Las Vegas, ill-prepared for the elements and the experience of the reservation. She feels strong empathy for Natalie, the dead raped woman, but is completely unequipped for talking with the Indians she encounters. Martin seems almost unaffected as he responds to her questions and tells her off for her assumptions. This sort of misunderstanding happens, he charges, whenever “one of you people” (whites, U.S. government-types) comes around. But, then there is a knock on the door, and he opens it to reveal Cory, another white U.S. official, and leans into him for a long hug. The two men stand outside the house, where Cory has no platitudes to offer his friend. The pain doesn’t get better he says, three years after his own young daughter died, and he recounts the story of a grief workshop he attended. It didn’t really help, but the counselor did tell him one thing he found useful, and he wants to share the advice with Martin: he has to “lean into” the pain. Feel it, rather than seek to avoid it. This is no macho, “man up” speech from one tough frontier man to another. It is also no condescending, paternalistic cowboy to an Indian talk. These two men are equals. Cory may always have seen Martin as his friend and equal, as a father of his daughter’s friend. But if they hadn’t seen themselves completely that way before, their similar losses are the great equalizer. And, they each possess a gentle masculinity that allows them to feel, to cry, and to rely on another.

This gentleness, this willingness to face and immerse themselves in emotion is at complete odds with the violent and more conventional forms of masculinity on display throughout the rest of the film. The story is, after all, set on an Indian reservation—the castaway, residue of land of a macho, violent nation, intent on pushing away and marginalizing the country’s original inhabitants in as oppressive a way as possible. The reservation nurtures hopeless, angry young men like Martin’s son, who turn to drugs and violent gang activity in futile and misguided attempts to shore up a corner of the culture’s dominant image of masculinity for themselves. It also attracts brawling, entitled, violent men, representing colonizing energy industries. Set all of this against the brutal backdrop of a violent natural environment, and Cory’s and Martin’s united efforts to be a different kind of man are remarkable.

A critique of the film that I have seen is that it is one in a long line of films set on American Indian land, focused mainly on American Indians’ lives, that yet relies on white leading actors to play the saviors. This is partially valid. We do need to see stories with Native leading characters. Their stories deserve a broad audience, and Americans who aren’t Native would benefit from experiencing them. There are many wonderful actors, including Birmingham and others in this film, to take on such roles. But, this is one film in which the white characters are not saviors. Their very inability to fulfill that role, to even help, is part of what frustrates and pains them. As Martin’s son points out to Cory, he couldn’t even save his own daughter. Neither could he save Natalie, or the reservation’s drug addicts, or Martin, or his marriage after the death of a child rent it. And, he seems resigned to the fact that he can’t save his own heart. The best he can muster right now is to do his job; spend time with his son; try for a measure of justice in an unjust world; and “lean into the pain” with his friend. He is no white knight riding in on a shining steed--or snow mobile. The problems the film shows us are the result of a too-long history of people of Cory’s race, of the government for which he works, interacting with those people who were in North America first, and their descendants. There are no easy fixes to these problems. But these two men—Cory and Martin—from vastly different backgrounds and different sides of the classic Cowboy v. Indian divide are going to lean in to their grief together. They truly are different sorts of men from so many of the others around them.