Wednesday, April 18, 2012
End of the American Dream?
At the end of McCabe & Mrs. Miller, McCabe may have defeated the bounty hunters sent to kill him, but he can only stumble through the snow, slowly bleeding to death. What does this film say about the small-time entrepreneur and the Goliath corporation? What does this movie tell us about heroes and the ideal of the rugged individual? Is the American Dream dead? Or is this film more about the era of Vietnam and Watergate?
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McCabe and Mrs. Miller is a western unlike and of the John Wayne films that preceded it. The plot of this film revolves around a small businessman whose business partner is an opium-addicted prostitute and together they make their money in prostitution and gambling. When a major resource mining company comes in and politely asks McCabe if he would sell his land, he refuses their and instead of taking more time to try to meet somewhere in the middle, the corporation sends in their hit men to kill McCabe. In the final scenes of this movie there is a shootout not atypical of the classic western where all three of the hit men are killed using unconventional western tactics, but McCabe is left critically wounded and eventually dies in a snowdrift. This movie says many things about the reality of life in the west as well as the present day. One aspect of this film that transcends time is the idea of the American Dream. It may seem that this movie says that the American Dream is impossible and the moderately successful individual will be cut down by the extremely wealthy and powerful, but I believe that this movie defines the American Dream in a way only a rugged movie such as this can. First, the American Dream is not dead because McCabe is living it up until he is killed by the corporation. Instead of showing that the dream is dead, this film show the reality of how incredibly difficult it is to achieve and maintain the American dream. McCabe and Mrs. Miller also shows that along with hard work, a lot of luck is needed to make the American Dream possible. If the church had not caught fire, there would have been some people in the town and most likely, someone would have found McCabe and they would have been able to get him somewhere to treat his wounds. McCabe and Mrs. Miller does not show the American Dream as impossible, but as it realistically is; very difficult and partly out of control of the person achieving it.
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