Damnation in Montana

Rating: 10/10 (18 July 2009)

A masterpiece in its genre, post Indian war frontier films, Montana in that case. A masterpiece too because of the three sons entirely entrusted to their ex-officer of a father because of the running away of the mother who could not stand the cold winters of Montana and was afraid of grizzly bears, that loving friendly species of furry animals more or less the cousins of our home-friendly teddy bears. Then the eldest son goes to the city of his mother to study and comes back with a fiancée, but it is 1914 and the three sons can only follow their patriotic call to go and fight in Europe on the English side. The father is furious but nothing can stop that call of the wild. The picture of the first world war is dramatic when you see these British soldiers running to the German lines with simple rifles and no helmets when the Germans have machine guns, helmets of course and gas masks against their poisonous gases. The eldest son is killed and the youngest son does what an old Indian rite tells him to do. He gets the heart of his brother out and eventually sends it back to his father for it to be buried in due place. Then he gets his Indian colors on his face and goes out to kill and scalp two German machine-gun operators, two of your teeth for one of my teeth. The middle son, wounded on one leg, is sent home and the younger son eventually comes back home. The real stake of the film then is Susanna, the fiancée of the elder son who was killed in the war. She was in love before the departure of the three brothers and still is after the war with the younger son, a wild but thrilling personality. A competition between the two surviving brothers starts then. Susanna chooses the younger one, but his wild side, what the Indian story teller calls his bear side, calls him away and he yields to that call and leaves the ranch for several years in order to discover the world and conquer his thirst, hunger and even his ravenous greed for the unknown and the savage. When he comes back Susanna has gone to the middle brother who has become a congressman in the meantime. The younger son, Justin, then accepts the situation and marries the daughter of the main family working on the ranch, from an Indian mother and an American father. He will get two children from her but he will try to compete with the prohibition traffickers who have the full support of the local sheriff. That will lead to a drama, the death of his wife, then his vengeance as soon as he is out of prison, on bail I suspect, and the attempt of the main moonshiner with the help of the sheriff to come and kill that rebellious man. And there the plot thickens and from dramatic we jump to tragic. And the main character of the story all get the ends they deserve, the middle brother, the younger brother, Susannah, the father and all the others, including the local moonshiner and his police friends. The end of the younger brother, in 1963 mind you, is absolutely brilliant. Add to that very strong story the beautiful and breathtaking landscape and mountains of Montana and you really enjoy every single scene. And after it all, when the last die is thrown on the marble of the tombstone you keep in mind the strong images about the first world war and the no less strong discourse of the father against all kinds of war that are declared bad by principle. Are they really bad by principle? Is there nothing to save a war now and then? For this film certainly not, and that is the fault of the politicians who are ready to do any kind of profitable maneuver to keep their juicy positions in government.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID