I have planned to finish off my article on Star Wars with my
personal view on the more dramatic and intimate issues of the story.
Originally, I plan to divert the attention from another film from 1977, Steven
Spielberg’s ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (‘CE3K’ hereafter), as both
films curiously are influenced by a great film from the 1950s, John Ford’s ‘The
Searchers’. Yet after some consideration, I find that are way more to be
explored in CE3K and it totally deserves an article on its own. Thus, here I
will only concentrate on a comparison between Star Wars and The Searchers, and
there may be some overlapping points in my next article on CE3K.
John Ford’s ‘The Searchers’ (1956) is considered as one of
the greatest work in the Western genre. What is interesting is that the Western
film has served as a predominant influence for many American filmmakers of the
New Hollywood era, especially those filmmakers active during the 1970s. I
presume there are 2 key reasons for that. First, the film was shown as the time
when most of these filmmakers were teenagers, so this film from the master of Western
served as a good example for them. Second, the character and theme portrayed in
‘The Searchers’ seemed to resonate well with the attitude of the 1970s – the
ambiguity of moral issues, the drifter, the alienation and so on. It should not
be surprising that directors like Scorsese, Schrader, Milius, Lucas, Spielberg,
Coppola and many others have paid homage of some kind to this film. The plot
and analysis are prevalent on the internet, and here we will concern with its
influence on our great space opera.
There are always scores to be settled in the family, be it
Darth Vader / Luke Skywalker, Anakin / Obi-Wan, or Han Solo / Kylo Ren. I
believe Lucas’ original genius is to create this tension between father-son
relationship, and the desperation for both parties to get a bit closer. In ‘The
Searchers’, the story was about a not-so-perfect male character, Ethan Edwards,
who has to redeem himself for his past mistakes and prejudices. Certainly, the
two films may be different in tone and outlook, yet in the ‘Star Wars’ movies,
many of the male characters have fallen into a state of redemption, as they
believe they are the culprit of
‘screwing some good things up’. They believe that they are responsible for
ruining the potential of some gifted individuals (e.g. Anakin, Ren and the Jedi
Order), and lead these young guys to the Dark Side and chaos. Thus, they are
often consumed with guilt and regret, and in some case they attempt to turn
away from the problem – which is the case for Obi-Wan Kenobi in Episode 4 and Luke
Skywalker. In ‘The Searchers’, Ethan was a drifter from home for many years,
and he did not want to say where he has been to and what he has done. He wanted
to remain anonymous and retreated from the stress he has got in life. I guess a
good thing common between ‘Star Wars’ and ‘The Serachers’ was that, while the characters
were courageous and often were willing to stand up to challenges, they were
also complex and realistic characters, and reflected aspects in life that we
might also identify with.
Characters who regretted their past mistakes would first
tend to drift away to reduce the pressure of it. Thus, Obi-Wan Kenobi isolated
himself from the Jedi clan, giving himself the new name ‘Ben’. When Luke
quizzed about the name ‘Obi-Wan’, he said with a regretful tone that it was a
name people has not mentioned for a very long time. He tried to run away from
this identity, as much like Ethan Edwards in ‘The Searchers’. Yet, there was no
way to hide, because at a certain point, they would have to confront their
pasts. Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and the aged Luke Skywalker have to come
face-to-face to what they have done and the dark sides that have often hidden
there, and Ethan Edwards had to face his own prejudices against Indians and his
irrational obsessions, towards his sister-in-law and daughter-in-law. Obi-Wan
felt that it was his own fault to create Darth Vader, as Darth Vader put it
succinctly when he faced Obi-Wan for the final showdown, ‘The Circle has
finally come around.’ Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker could only redeem themselves
while facing his mistakes – albeit through their own sacrifices. Ethan Edwards,
after rescuing his daughter-in-law, finally appreciated that there would be no
place for him in the community, chose to leave and drift away once more,
completing his redemption.
What ‘The Searchers’ is driving at is the fact that we are
always ‘searching’ for something – our identities, our roles and how we fit
into the story. As Rey, our heroine in the new trilogy, has put it in The Last
Jedi – ‘I need someone to show me my place in all of this.’ You do not have to
carry a lightsaber to be able to identify with this statement. It is a
universal condition for anyone, and we are eternally searching for our own
meanings to exist in our world. While it seems that it is a more pessimistic
end for Ethan Edwards – because he was literally going in circles, searching
everywhere and eventually going nowhere. It is great to see that ‘Star Wars’
placed a more optimistic outlook in this issue. If one was willing to follow a
moral conscience, much like the Jedi way, and exercised with reason when making
decisions, they would eventually discover the right direction and the meanings
for their own lives. If you feel that something has been awoken – then it is
the time to wield it!!
-End-
(2/2)
by Ed Law
18/12/2017
Film Analysis
