Wind River
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Talent: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Jon Bernthal, Graham Greene
Released: September 8th
Fields of snow, howling winds, and a honey-warm voice narrates a dreamy ode to love as a young woman runs for her life: the same lines, “far from your loving eyes,” drift through the film, like a fatal, snow-blown lullaby, landing softly on death. Her name is Natalie, a young Native-American woman whose body will soon be found caked in ice by hunter of hunters Corey (Jeremy Renner) whose daughter died under similar circumstances. But what was she running from, or whom?
Taylor Sheridan’s Wind River considers this question, shifting blame from man to nature, from individual to circumstance, with shivering uncertainty. Corey teams up with FBI agent Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) who quickly learns that her laws and rules mean little out here where the cold can burst your lungs or drive you to insanity. In this film nature takes and takes; frostbite looks like the blue handprints of a hungry monster, slowly claiming its victim. There are some hawk-eye aerial shots of the small town that shows the surrounding wilderness pressing in. Corey scolds a drug-addict for failing to escape this “frozen hell” when he had the chance, a lament that seems to be applicable to him, too.
Corey spends most of the film skirting the peripherals, prowling like the wolves he is paid to hunt. Grief strikes his face repeatedly, but finds little give, like wind shattering off a jagged mountain peak. He dons white camouflage overalls to blend into the furious blizzards; he shoots dead one wolf and lets the rest of the pack scram, a display of cold equanimity that he retains throughout the film. His eyes are a high sky blue, at once distant and cool, yet capable of zoning in and dealing out judgments with violent precision. But where does the violence come from? Is it innate, in the soil, or was it planted and nurtured through neglect, through torment? Sheridan explores these questions, exhuming the ignored trials of Native-Americans and damning to hell’s blizzards those who tried to bury them in the first place.
Words: John Vaughan
