This Gorgeous, Sweeping Jessica Chastain Western Captured a Violent Moment in History Few Movies Have Touched

How America was violently conquered is a thorny subject that few films have been willing to honestly explore. Susanna White‘s 2021 biographical Western Woman Walks Ahead attempts to do just that, and it succeeds. Leading its cast, the Academy Award-winning Jessica Chastain takes on another strong-willed woman role and explores an unconventional love that promises to bridge the gap between two sides of the American divide on the frontier. It tells the true story of an artist’s impression of a Native American resistance leader during the last months of his life and his assassination by U.S. government officials.

Chastain wears Catherine Weldon’s heart, a New York-based widowed painter who takes a train to the Dakotas with the mission to capture the larger-than-life Lakota chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes) on canvas in the late 19th century. During her stay with the towering leader in the months leading to his infamous horrible death, Catherine experiences the injustice faced by the Lakota people as frontier settlers mete out violence against the community and herself to suppress them. She learns about their plight in their fight for their land rights. In the process, she falls in love with her host’s charm and he with her intelligence and determination, though the film doesn’t push that button more than it should. The movie instead explores how systemic, brutal violence was used in the West to silence dissent and make it easy for settlers to grab land while the Natives were forcefully concentrated on reservations. Woman Walks Ahead is a mirror to America’s uncomfortable past, one that Susan White boldly paints with honesty.

‘Woman Walks Ahead’ Offers a Nuanced Portrayal of the Conflict Between Settlers and Native Americans

The film isn’t without its flaws, having drawn criticism for its historical inaccuracies, particularly in its portrayal of Sitting Bull’s death, and for slipping into the all-too-common white savior trope. The latter is a misstep that even well-intentioned films like Taylor Sheridan’s poignant Wind River haven’t managed to avoid. While for Sheridan’s film, it was Cory Lambert and Jane Banner‘s white characters who had to lead the search for a missing Indigenous woman on a reservation, for White’s Woman Walks Ahead, it is the portrayal of Catherine Weldon as the white woman who fuels the natives to find their voice. Yet, even with its misses, Woman Walks Ahead is one of the most nuanced portrayals of not just one of the most understated and misrepresented tragic historical events in America, but also the conflict between the U.S. government and Native Americans.

Through the simmering connection between Catherine and Sitting Bull, we get to understand Sitting Bull as a charismatic leader who had to make difficult choices for the sake of his people during a time of adversity. The film is restrained in its depiction of such a heavy message, avoiding grotesque violence while painting the dire picture through an emotional, intimate story with deep conversations that are probing and sometimes painfully candid. “You got a train from New York, right?” Sitting Bull rhetorically asks Catherine when she tries to convince him to permit her to paint him by stating how far she’s come. Catherine begins to see how even seemingly innocent actions, like riding a train built on Native lands, tie her to a system of oppression. While it is inherently problematic that the film places Catherine as the lens through which we get a snapshot of the Lakotas’ tribulations, it challenges her—and the audience—to reconsider the narratives of heroism and progress we’ve been fed. With Sitting Bull as Catherine’s primary witness to her perspective, they share the screen equally, and we see his charm and ugliness—a human being with limited choices against a powerful, aggressive, and violent occupier. Few Westerns, like Kevin Costner‘s magnificent directorial debut, Dances With Wolves, have touched on the atrocities committed against the Lakota people, but even fewer have put context to the conflict the way Woman Walks Ahead does.

‘Woman Walks Ahead’ Is a Visual and Emotional Landscape

Susanna White’s sweeping vistas are a character in their own right. Whether it is capturing the plains, the hills and mountains on the horizon, the spiritual-like cultural festivities of the Lakota people, or Catherine and Sitting Bull’s intimate connection, each image grounds the film in both its artistic beauty and brutal reality. Chastain does exceptionally well in a role in which she defies the status quo (both patriarchal and unjust), while her co-star, Michael Greyeyes, steals scenes with the intelligence and dignity with which he embodies his part. The film also has an incredible supporting cast, including Chaske Spencer and Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell. How do we reconcile the beauty of a place with the blood spilled to claim it? “I am just here to paint a painting,” Chastain’s Catherine Weldon defiantly says, and perhaps that’s what makes Woman Walks Ahead unforgettable, as it paints both worlds.

Woman Walks Ahead is available to rent on Prime Video in the U.S.

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Woman Walks Ahead

Release Date

September 10, 2017

Runtime

103 Minutes

Main Genre

Western

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