Hostiles: Simple Yet Nonjudgmental

Justice or revenge? Who's to say?

In a culture that feels an insatiable need to cast moralistic judgment on every matter social, political, or historical, it's refreshing to find a movie about as contentious a topic as our nation's relationship with Native Americans that doesn't. And while I wish that this subtlety extended to the emotional pursuits of Hostiles, I'll take what I can get. We can't have everything. In a nutshell, the movie follows a sad US Army Captain named Joe Blocker (Christian Bale) tasked with transporting a bunch of sad Native Americans back to their tribal land around the turn of the 20th century, and at its worst, Hostiles can feel like little more than a bunch of sad people sitting around being sad. Yet at its best, this movie is nonjudgmental to a fault, a rare commodity in today's ideological landscape and something I frankly can't believe I'm getting the opportunity to discuss.

Hostiles is the type of movie to lay down a gauntlet right from the get-go. Its world is a harsh and unforgiving one populated by disillusioned soldiers and natives familiar with tragedy, ridden by such calamities as ruthless Comanche raiders and children being killed in gunfights. While far from subtle, Hostiles is an unrestrained and unapologetically brutal portrait of frontier life that likewise captures this strange and undeniable beauty. The vast panoramas of the plains are largely gorgeously shot by cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and only elevated by an ethereal score by the famed Max Richter. The casting of this movie is likewise an all-star affair, featuring such names as Jesse Plemons, Timothée Chalamet, and yes, Christian Bale. Despite an apparent lack of subtlety in the nitty-gritty, I mostly like how ideologically noncommittal Hostiles is. The largely-white American soldiers are portrayed as neither saviors nor devils, and the Native characters aren't simple savages or pure victims. Some may call it bothsidesism. I call it honesty. The characters in this movie, like the real-life people they were inspired by, aren't concerned about concepts such as morals, equity, justice, or being vindicated by history so much as they are worried about surviving to see tomorrow.

Nevertheless, for all of its attempted balance, Hostiles can be rather one-dimensional. It rarely seems capable of being anything other than sad and dark. It's trying to be beautiful without recognizing that beauty tends to arise from a complex and conflicting well of emotions. It's a good movie that's doing its irritating best to pass as a masterpiece, leaning ever-too-comfortably into the tendencies of the melodrama without exploring other, more subtle methods. Also, is it wrong to mention that it's painfully slow? The leisurely pace of Hostiles tested me, and its lack of meaningfully varying scenery didn't help its occasional monotony. Still, there are good things to say about this movie, and though the aspergers in me probably doesn't have the attention span to watch Hostiles again, I'm glad I watched it once to give myself the chance to say them.

If I were to draw a comparison, Hostiles reminds me in more ways than I expected of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, another western drama that doesn't quite eclipse the melodrama of Hostiles. Nevertheless, despite an overbearing sentimentality as well as an occasionally dull sameness, Hostiles makes up for it with some solid performances from especially Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike, as well as a surprising and refreshingly measured, reasonable, and neutral commentary on native-white relationships. And for as rare a commodity as that is in today's culture, I tip my hat to Hostiles, a movie that does its best to be ideologically and emotionally honest, shortcomings and all.

Hostiles - 7/10

Ezekiel 12:1-6