Copyright
2014 by Gary L. Pullman
Although it's not unusual
for Western movies (and books) to express religious themes, such
dramas and narratives rarely have supernatural elements. Two
exceptions to the “rule” are Clint Eastwood's films High
Plains Drifter (1973) and Pale
Rider (1985).
In the
former picture, certain of the protagonist's characteristics and
abilities suggest that there may be more to him than is first
apparent, and the movie provides a clue or two as to the possible
nature of the stranger.
First,
as James L. Neibaur points out in his chapter “High Plains Drifter”
in The Clint Eastwood Westerns,
the “stranger” whom Eastwood plays “is mysterious, he is
controlling, he is all-knowing, and he is powerful” (104).
Second,
Sarah Belding, the wife of hotel operator Lewis Belding, tells the
stranger that the town's previous sheriff, Jim Duncan, was buried in
an unmarked grave, adding “the dead don't rest without a marker”
(104).
Third,
in a dream it is revealed to the stranger that the town's leaders
conspired to have the sheriff beaten to death by three brothers with
whips, before allowing the murderers to be arrested. Having been
released from prison, the killers are now on their way back to the
town, Lago, to avenge themselves on the town.
Fourth,
after painting the town red and renaming Lago “Hell,” the
stranger abandons the townspeople, just as the killers return. In his
absence, many of the citizens are killed, and the town itself is
burned to the ground. It is only then that the stranger returns and
kills one of the murderers, Dan Carlin, using a whip, which he
then throws into the saloon, “alerting the two surviving brothers,”
whom he kills (104).
Fifth,
as the stranger rides out of Hell, Mordecai, a dwarf whom the
stranger had named mayor and sheriff of Lago, is in the town's
cemetery, carving a marker for a grave. “I never knew your name,”
Mordecai says. “Yes, you do,” the stranger replies. The marker
Mordecai carves bears the name Marshal Jim Duncan; it is for the
sheriff's once-unmarked grave. Presumably, now that his grave is
marked, the stranger will be able to “rest.”
As
Neibuar observes, There has been some discussion as to the identity
of the stranger”:
The script originally indicated that the stranger was
the marshal's brother . . . and the scenes alluding to this
[identity] were filmed, but Eastwood had them excised. In the film,
the stranger is more a ghostly figure, perhaps a reincarnation of
Duncan, based on the final lines between him and Mordecai and the
supernatural air of the story” (107-108).
The New York Times's
1973 review of the film also suggests that the movie is intended to
have a supernatural angle:
High
Plains Drifter, with Eastwood as
director as well as star, is part ghost story, part revenge Western .
. . . It exalts and delights in a kind of pitiless Old Testament
wrath . . . Eastwood's characterization of The Stranger [is that of a
figure] who settles God's score with Lago . . . (108).
The
fact that Eastwood, the director, cut the scenes that represents the
stranger as the sheriff's brother and the clues that the character is
a ghostly or reincarnated avenger, seem clearly to suggest that
Eastwood himself wants the movie to be understood as having a supernatural theme.
Twelve
years later, Eastwood would make another Western with a supernatural
slant, Pale Rider
(1985). Like the ghostly stranger in High Plains Drifter,
The Preacher of Pale Rider
“is mysterious, he is controlling, he is all-knowing, and he is
powerful,” or, as Neibaur describes him, “he seems to have a
mysterious, mystical quality, able to evade people in a gunfight by
seeming to disappear. He comes from nowhere; he leaves when the job
is done” (149).
The
Preacher's association with Christianity is made plain by his
arrival, just as fourteen-year-old Megan Wheeler is praying that God
will send someone to deliver her mother, herself, and the other gold
prospectors from the gunmen who just stormed through and destroyed
their camp, killing her dog.
When
she sees The Preacher riding into the ruins of the prospectors' camp,
Megan believes that he is the answer to her prayer, and, indeed, he
rides a pale horse, just like one of the four horsemen of the
apocalypse, of whom she has just read in the book of Revelation: “And
I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was
Death, and Hell followed with him.”
In
discussing The Preacher, the Chicago Tribune's
editorial writer, Stephen Chapman points out that he is not Christ
the Savior, but the Jesus “who brought not peace but a sword, the
one of Revelation who raises the righteous into heaven and casts the
wicked into the depths” (149).
The
Preacher's supernatural origin is also suggested by the feats he
accomplishes single-handedly, exploits that the men among the
prospectors are unable to accomplish collectively. He fights off
several men, defeating them with no other weapon than an axe handle;
he defeats a Goliath-size adversary with the same sledgehammer he
uses to cleave a boulder in half with a single blow; he outguns a
group of gunfighters notorious for their skills with a pistol; when
he departs, he leaves behind him a courageous and united community
who, before his arrival, were divided and afraid.
As
Neibaur suggests, Eastwood underscores the supernatural dynamics of
Pale Rider by ensuring
that it shares similarities with his other supernatural film, High
Plains Drifter:
The
setup [of Pale Rider]
has immediate similarities to High Plains Drifter
(1973) upon the Eastwood character's entrance. In that film [High
Plains Drifter], he enters a
very quiet town. In Pale Rider,
he arrives as the town has quieted down from a most recent attack.
Among the first things the stranger does in High Plains
Drifter is respond with stoicism
to men confronting him in a saloon, later shooting them down when
they physically accost him in a barber shop soon afterward. In Pale
Rider, the stranger comes to the
rescue of a man being attacked by a group of others, effectively
beating them down. . . . The man he rescues, Hull Barrett . . . the
leader of the miners, invites the stranger to his house for dinner.
He appears wearing a clerical collar and is thereafter referred to as
The Preacher. These initial scenes establish the character's
abilities as well as a mystery about his backstory (148).
The
scenes also establish a link between the two supernatural films and
their supernatural heroes. However, the older movie invokes
reincarnation to explain Sheriff Jim Duncan's return from the dead,
while the later film invokes the Bible, solidly grounding Pale
Rider's supernatural aspects in
the Christian vision of death and judgment.
In
High Plains Drifter,
the stranger creates Hell; in Pale Rider,
he is death, delivering the wicked to judgment, for, although Chapman
sees Eastwood's Preacher as Jesus, the movie itself offers several clues that suggest a different identity for The Preacher: the film's very title, which is an allusion to Revelation 6:8, the Bible verse that equates
the “pale rider” to Death, the apocalyptic horseman who ushers in
hell, and the nature of The Preacher as a supernatural figure
delivered by God in answer to Megan's prayer clearly indicate that he
is Death personified, not Jesus.
Whereas
the stranger in High Plains Drifter
abandons “sinners” to hell, The Preacher in Pale Rider
kills the wicked and appears to leave their eternal fate to the
judgment of God.
Supernatural
Westerns are so unusual that their existence—and their raison
d'être—seem
to beg explanation. Despite the mystical undertones of High
Plains Drifter
and the Christian overtones of Pale
Rider, it's
likely that neither film is an expression of religious faith on the
part of Eastwood himself, who told movie critic Gene
Siskel that he is an atheist. However, Eastwood also admitted
that he does “feel spiritual
things,” declaring that “if I stand on the side of the Grand
Canyon and look down, it moves me in some way.” He's also a devoted
practitioner
of Transcendental Meditation.
Eastwood's
own take on his supernatural Westerns is that both are allegories.
High Plains Drifter,
he says, is “just an allegory . . . a speculation on what happens
when they go ahead and kill the sheriff and somebody comes back and
calls the town's conscience to bear.
There's
always retribution for your deeds” (The
Clint Eastwood Westerns,
105). Likewise, Eastwood explains, “Pale
Rider is
kind of allegorical, more in the High
Plains Drifter
mode: like that, though he isn't a reincarnation or anything, but he
does ride a pale horse like the four horsemen of the apocalypse . . .
It's a classic story of the big guys against the little guys . . .
(The Clint Eastwood Westerns,
149).
For
Eastwood, perhaps each of his supernatural movies is “just an
allegory,” but, of course, the creator of a work of art doesn't
determine its meaning, except for himself. Any interpretation that is
supported by the details of the story itself is both reasonable and
possible, and there seems more internal evidence in Pale
Rider for a Christian
interpretation than for an atheistic or a secular one.
After
all, the movie deliberately alludes to Christian beliefs, to a
specific Biblical account of apocalypse and judgment, and to a
supernatural order of existence that transcends the ordinary world of
the Wild West in which the movie is set.
Western
culture is suffused with the traditions of the Christian faith;
allegories which include supernatural characters and events,
especially when they are informed by specifically Christian doctrine
and tradition, can certainly be reckoned to possess and to
communicate Christian themes.
Bane
Messenger, the protagonist of my own series, An Adventure of the Old
West, has a name of religious significance as well. Bane (the
nickname by which Banan goes) derives from the Old English word bana,
meaning “killer, slayer, murderer, a worker of death”; the Late
Latin word angelus means
“messenger.” Putting them
together, Bane Messenger can be read as meaning Angel of Death,
which, the books of the series, Good With a Gun,
The Valley of the Shadow,
and Blood Mountain,
suggest, as does the short story “Bane Messenger, Bounty Hunter,”
a prequel that introduces the series, is how Bane regards himself.
His
skill with a gun, like his indomitable will, his steely nerve, and
his love for justice, equip him as an instrument of divine
righteousness and wrath. It's his mission, he believes, to use the
“gifts” he's received to ensure that justice triumphs and the
innocent are protected from “the worst sort of men,” those, as a
bounty hunter, he tracks down to kill or, as a lawman, risks his life
to stop. Believing himself on a mission sanctioned by his Creator,
Bane puts his own fate in the hands of God every time he draws his
gun, putting his life in mortal danger in order to bring desperate
killers to justice, dead or alive.
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