The Taking: Monument Valley and What it Represents

Far more westerns were shot on-location in Bronson Canyon, but those that were made in Monument Valley are among the absolute best of the genre. Unfortunately, to some culture warriors, their status as westerns amounts to an original sin. After documenting the horror genre in previous films (78/52, Memory: The Origin of Alien, Leap of Faith), director Alexandre O. Philippe turns his attention to westerns and the power of landscape in The Taking, which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Monument Valley is absolutely not in Texas, but John Ford shot The Searchers there anyway. The resulting film remains un-cancel-ably iconic. It and the other six films Ford shot amid the famous Colorado Plateau landscape supply the most memorable images of Philippe’s film. Many critics take issue with the geographic liberties Ford and other filmmakers took. Yet, Bronson Canyon is not in Texas either, but none of the commentators complain about the scenes from The Searchers that were filmed there.

Without question, The Searchers is the film Taking is most concerned with. It is universally recognized as a classic, yet widely misunderstood. In many ways, it is a blistering indictment of white settler prejudice against the native tribes, but those who have never seen it, often assume quite the opposite. Frustratingly, little of the analysis in Taking addresses this misunderstanding.

Monument Valley is indeed on Navajo Nation land, which Taking repeatedly emphasizes. However, it ignores the good will Ford and John Wayne earned with the Navajo community. (Reportedly, Wayne halted production of The Searchers for a few days, just so Beulah Archuletta could attend her son’s wedding.)

That leads into the film’s critical shortcoming, which is the lack of differing opinions. Taking really could have used some input from a sympathetic John Ford or John Wayne biographer. Instead, all of Philippe’s commentators basically have the same viewpoint. Since they are never seen on-camera, it is almost like hearing the same, uninterrupted voice, repeating the same opinions.

Frankly, that uniformity of perspective becomes rather boring. As a point of contrast, one of the reasons why Mark Hartley’s Not Quite Hollywood is so lively is due to the presence of dissenting critics who argued Australian exploitation films were really just a pile of rubbish.

Five Came Back: To Serve and Document

There are notable exceptions, like the tireless Gary Sinise and his Captain Dan Band, but it is almost impossible to imagine today’s Hollywood celebrities appearing at War Bond rallies and hobnobbing with average GIs at the Stage Door Canteen. It is even more unlikely any of the top-tier tent-pole directors would put their careers on hold to help the government make their case for war and document the subsequent battles. Yet that is exactly what Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, George Stevens, and John Huston did during World War II. Their wartime experiences are chronicled in Five Came Back (trailer here), a three-part documentary directed by Laurent Bouzereau and adapted by Mark Harris from his nonfiction bestseller, which premieres this Friday on Netflix.

Arguably, Capra, Ford, Wyler, and Stevens were at the top of their games when they joined the war effort, while Huston had just scored his first surprise breakout hit (a little film called The Maltese Falcon). They would lose several productive years, but they were more than willing to serve. Aside from Capra, who was something of a moviemaking field marshal, mostly working in Washington on the Why We Fight series, all risked their lives amid real and frequently bloody warfighting.

John Ford was the earliest into battle, recording the first American victory captured on film in the Oscar winning documentary short, The Battle of Midway. Eventually, Ford and Stevens would combine forces to document D-Day, which incredibly was not the latter’s most harrowing assignment. Huston supposedly documented plenty of action in Battle for San Pietro and Tunisian Victory, but his reliance on recreated scenes raises ethical issues Harris and company do not ignore. However, his long-suppressed PTSD documentary Let There Be Light is presented as a redemptive masterwork. Wyler’s Oscar winning The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress could very well still be the most popular of the wartime documentaries under discussion, but George Stevens’ journalistic record of the liberation of Dachau clearly had the most far-reaching influence. It was even presented as evidence at the Nuremberg military tribunals.

Yet, that is just a part of the story. Harris also traces the lasting influence of the directors’ wartime experiences on their subsequent studio films. To take stock of their legacies, five contemporary directors serve as resident experts on their particular WWII-era filmmakers. Some of the pairings are not exactly obvious, but Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greenglass, Stephen Spielberg, Lawrence Kasdan, and Francis Ford Coppola all have significant insights to offer on Capra, Ford, Wyler, Stevens, and Huston, respectively.

There is some pretty amazing footage in FCB (and almost all of it is totally legit, notwithstanding Huston’s occasional fudging). Having distribution through Netflix also allows Bouzereau sufficient time and flexibility to fully tell the five men’s stories. As a result, the complete series actually exceeds three hours, with the individual episodes clocking in at fifty-nine, sixty-seven, and sixty-nine minutes. The contemporary directors also engage in some respectable film criticism, which is certainly not a pursuit for the faint of heart. Yet, what is most refreshing about FCB is the unabashed patriotism of its subjects. These were men with larger-than-life personalities and a great love of country, who were not afraid some snide hipster might call them “jingoistic.” Very highly recommended, Five Came Back starts streaming this Friday (3/31) on Netflix.