As I’m diving into my new feature that is wholly inspired by Jeremiah Johnson, I’m realizing how unusual a story structure the film has — and how difficult it’d be to make something similar today. It seems like a crazy structure to me for two reasons.
First, and most apparently, is the fact that we know nothing about Johnson’s character off the bat, nor do we ever learn anything about what came before the first frame of the film. We can infer he was in the navy, given his striped pants and mariner’s cap but beyond that - there is never a mention of his parents, his war time experiences, where he came from, nothing. All we ever receive his is staunch disappointment with civilized society and its mores. This is a bold choice that would be tempting to undermine in favor of added character depth - but instead they give us Johnson’s character a priori, for us to figure out based on only his actions in the film.
Second, the overarching character arc is fascinating. The first half, or so, feels like a Joseph Campbell - Hero’s Journey (without the familiar home context to begin with). A man ventures into a new land, meets people, has experiences, the experiences change him, and he ends up positively changed and more powerful. That would bring you about 70 minutes into the film. SPOILERS: by this point, he has a family - a cabin, he’s built his own little version of society - the thing he’s run so far from, in some sense - but made it his own. But the character arc continues. SPOILERS AGAIN: he loses everything, his family killed - he burns his house in a fit of rageful grief. And then dedicates himself to exacting vengeance. And yet, the story doesn’t continue so simply there. It’s not a tale of rageful justice. He actually feels catharsis immediately after his attack on the hunting party ends — he stops himself short, realizing violence will not comfort him. But now he’s a marked man, attacked by the Crow tribe wherever he goes. His arc is not one of vengeance, but of survival. Of being caught in the forces of nature (and fate). And here’s where things get really interesting: he methodically (by the writer’s design) ends up reuniting with each person who met on the way up to the moment he lost his family. And they’re in the same places more or less. It’s an exact retracing of his young hero’s journey - except now it’s marked by grief, isolation, and constant attacks from all sides. By the end of it, you truly feel his legendary status. Not as a hero, but as a myth incarnate. It’s an incredible effect.
And to sum up, I don’t think the second aspect would’ve worked (or landed as powerfully) without that first aspect - the lack of backstory. If we knew all sorts of contextual details, they would color his journey - distract from the myth that is being built in front of your eyes in the wilderness. What good would it do to know his parents names, or that he was married once before, or anything like that? And yet, the average audience expects that sort of thing. So, it’s all the more brave that Pollack, Redford, Milius, and Anhalt worked past it.
Last thing I’ll mention is that, if you read the early draft of Jeremiah Johnson (which I linked to below in a previous post) you’ll see that it is WAY longer than the finished product - in terms of volume of dialogue. They cut out huge swaths of it. And yet, the dialogue (and monologues) that they kept in so truly make the film and give it a colorful identity — it’s like they knew they had too much of a good thing and compressed it to the perfect serving for the audience. So impressive.