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| Hostiles (2017) |
I have been described on more than one occasion as a terribly angry person. I suppose on some days, that's a fair and true assessment. I admit that I have never gotten used to the Lord's rough ways, the curious, sometimes devastating circumstances through which He deals with us. I spend quite a bit of time shaking my fist at Him. I'm guilty of asking, "Why him or her? Why not me?" I find myself often disappointed with the Divine, though I suppose that says more about my own expectations than anything else. I used to want to believe so badly in those cheap, pithy sayings like, "God will never let you down." Now I think that anyone who actually believes that has never once demanded something of Him that requires an act of true grace, has never taken a good long look inside his or her own dirty soul and asked that terribly painful question: "What have I done?"
Hostiles asks that question while wearing a stone face, without blinking or flinching, with a measure of brutal honesty. And it challenges us to do the same. The film opens as the Quaid homestead is attacked by a band of renegade Comanches, and Rosalee Quaid witnesses her entire family slaughtered in mere moments. She runs for her life, but before her final fate can be decided, we cut away to follow Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale). It's a jarring opening to a film full of devastating moments, and really does a good job of setting the tone for the story ahead—this isn't a movie for the faint of heart.
Blocker is a veteran of the Indian Wars, respected by his troops, and liked by his commanding officer. He also happens to be ruthless on the battlefield, and it's clear he's earned a reputation for this as well. When he is charged with transporting dying Cheyenne war chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), and his family back to their ancestral home in Montana, Blocker is reluctant. See, Blocker has a history with Yellow Hawk, who is responsible for the deaths of many of Blocker's close friends and comrades during the wars. Blocker is a hard, cruel man ruled by his anger. He initially refuses to carry out the deed, and only relents when threatened with losing his pension and with an impending court-martial. His emotions in turmoil, he stalks out into the desert and screams at the heavens in defiance. The Almighty thunders in ominous reply. As Blocker and his troops strike out with the Cheyenne family in tow, it's not long before they come across the Quaid homestead, and a traumatized, suicidal Rosalee.
Hostiles is a film that simmers with quiet intensity, punctuated by jarring moments of violence and fury. There's so much underlying tension between the characters that you're likely to find yourself wishing for something terrible to happen, if only to experience a moment of cathartic release. Blocker despises the situation he finds himself in. And Bale is an experienced enough actor that he rarely has to speak to communicate his emotional state. At every point, the rage he feels is etched onto his face. Yellow Hawk and his family are enigmas. They take the untoward and sometimes brutal treatment from Blocker's troops without complaint. You expect any one of them to snap at any moment, to make an attempt on Blocker's life. You never quite know what Rosalee is thinking. She's traumatized, that much is clear. But to what extent is the question. And the film follows these characters along their journey, the scenes playing out like a series of vignettes. There's never a moment's peace as the characters constantly look over their shoulders, wondering if death will come in the night, either by an arrow from a renegade war party, or by a knife's blade from within their own camp.
The story takes a hard turn with the introduction of Charles Wills (Ben Foster), an old accomplice of Blocker's who acts as his dark mirror. Wills has been charged with the brutal murder of a family, and Blocker is tasked with taking Wills along with the group to be delivered to the place where he will finally be hanged. Wills acts as a kind of dark side to Blocker's character. Though Blocker is a cruel man, set in his ways and embittered by the cards he's been dealt, what Hostiles understands is that no one is ever truly lost, not until that final choice has been made. Blocker has killed for his country, he has killed out of revenge, but he has never killed for the sake of killing; he's never killed and justified it as though it's all he knows how to do. Wills, on the other hand, snapped. He made his choice, and murdered a family. And, like a dark tempter, he lingers in the dark corners of the party's camp, speaking to Blocker in low whispers, suggesting that he and Blocker aren't so different after all.
I was grateful when Hostiles finally ended. Not because I disliked the film, but because I finally had relief. You spend the movie watching Blocker skirt the edges of his own humanity, consumed by rage that threatens to brim over at any given moment. It's Rosalee and her soft ways that help him begin to thaw. He watches her interact with Yellow Hawk and his family. He sees how she handles herself gracefully in the face of unfathomable pain. In mere minutes, life as she knew it ceased to exist. And, she has to claw and scratch her way out of the darkness to put herself back together. She, perhaps even more than Blocker, has every right to hate Yellow Hawk's people. After all, they took her family. But she doesn't. She smiles at them, genuine, warm smiles. She interacts with them, and laughs with Yellow Hawk's grandson, Little Bear. We spend a good amount of time watching Blocker watch Rosalee. She's stronger than he is or any of his men, who one-by-one begin to lose their selves on the long trail to Montana.
The final stretch of the film is simultaneously the most painful and the most rewarding. As Yellow Hawk's health fails, he nevertheless earns Blocker's trust, and they close in on Montana. He dies as they reach their destination, and Blocker stands watch over the native burial service performed by his family. Any lesser film would have ended here, would have sought to make some vague political statement about human rights and mutual forgiveness. Hostiles, blessedly, has more on its mind. As the burial services finish, dawn breaks, and they set to burying Yellow Hawk on his homeland. Then you see the riders coming in the distance, and whatever hope the film has given you up until this point is sucked away again.
The riders approach Blocker, Rosalee, and Yellow Hawk's family. They say they have staked their own claim to the land. Blocker protests that the land belongs to the Cheyenne. The riders say that no native claims will be honored by anyone, that it's time for the party to dig up the old war chief and move on. This is the moment of Blocker's choice. He can walk away, right now. Let the riders have their way with Yellow Hawk's family. He could draw his own weapon and gun the natives down himself. God knows he's wanted to since the film's opening moments. But there, at the old man's graveside, with Rosalee looking on, he makes his choice. He stands his ground. He will fight with the people he has, for years, hated.
Now, when Blocker draws his weapon, all that rage has been transformed. It's no longer something like hate, but is instead a kind of righteous anger. The battle is loud and furious, every gunshot thunders, and Blocker stalks the battlefield not as a bloodthirsty murderer, but as a dark, avenging angel. He stands shoulder-to-shoulder with a people he has for so long hated, a violent man purged of himself, cleansed inside, scoured by the strong hand of love for other rather than absorption with self, and won, in the end, by grace. The violence gives way to a devastating aftermath. Hardly anyone escapes this movie unscathed. It's a high price to be paid—too high, in many instances. But one man, the man that no one believed would or even could change his ways, emerges scarred and broken and profoundly wounded in the deepest parts of his being, but cleansed nonetheless. Saved from himself, purged of the darkness in his own soul.
Anger is something that permeates to the very core of our beings. By comparison, it's relatively easy to deny oneself vices. Sex you can live without. Drugs make you stupid. And alcohol tastes bad anyway. But anger? Rage? Hatred? Those things get inside of you and mess you up in ways heroin could only dream of. They latch on to certain memories or certain emotions and ride the wave all the way to the surface of the subconscious. And when you run to the booze or the drugs or whatever you use to drown the memory or the feeling again, they sink down into the depths and wait for the right trigger to bring them crashing back up. They lie in wait while you tell yourself you're making progress, while you date Jesus and go skipping down the long hallways of life, wearing a big fake grin and telling everyone you're doing just fine. But don't worry, they'll be back. Right when you least expect it, they cut your throat with a jagged edge. And you wake up one day wondering where it all came from, wondering whether or not you even made progress at all. Wondering why Jesus let it sit inside of you and rot you from the inside out. Wondering if Jesus is even there at all, or if it's all just one great lie. Not realizing that the only lie told in all those years of silent pain was the one you told yourself. The lie that said you never had a choice, that the only way to get through life was to keep plugging on, to never stop and think about yourself, to never once look inward and realize that down here on this lonely blue rock, there's no such thing as a high horse. That we're all wallowing in this mess together and the only One who has any capital on righteousness had to die to undo all the damage that's been done to you. To undo all the damage that you've done while you've been off dating Jesus and skipping down the hallways of life, wearing a fake grin and, as far as you can tell, doing just fine.
Many a night have I stalked out into my own personal deserts, screaming up at the heavens in utter defiance. Rarely does the Almighty thunder in ominous reply. But in my quieter moments, usually when the screaming's done, He does offer some solace and comfort, and I can finally sleep without being restless for a few nights, at least. The trouble with anger is that it turns you inward while directing you outward. You'll find reasons to despise people without ever figuring out what it is that's driving you to do that. It takes Rosalee and her dignity, her speaking plainly about things and telling him what he doesn't necessarily want to hear, to shake Blocker out of his self-induced state of rage. And it takes her quiet demeanor, her understanding ways, to comfort him as he finally takes a good long look at himself, as reality sets in and the illusion that Joe Blocker is a man who can't be reached begins to shatter. It takes Yellow Hawk making peace, not holding the past against him, to help him see that until he has forgiven himself of the real darkness inside of him, he does not understand forgiveness at all. We need people like Rosalee. We need people like Yellow Hawk. People who can show us the worst parts of ourselves while simultaneously being bigger than all our pain. I think we tend to call those people friends.
We need them because behind them, usually working through them, is One who stood on the battlefield and made His choice. One who chose to stand with a people He had every right to despise because of their sin, One who struck out against the dark tempter of this world in righteous anger. One who pursues the people He chose to represent with a furious love that damns their hatred for Him and for each other. And though He never guarantees that we'll get out of this world without scars, without broken bones and deep, profound wounds, we emerge from our encounters with Him cleansed to the deepest parts of our being. Saved from ourselves, having had the darkness purged from our souls.
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