The quintessential Hero’s Journey is embodied in movies such as “Pale Rider” with Clint Eastwood (riding a pale horse, no less! ) and “Once Upon a time in the West” with Charles Bronson. “Shane” and many others also fall into this category.
Indeed the Hero’s Journey is hammered out constantly by Hollywood and, as we have seen, it surfaces in road movies, horror movies, westerns and other genres. Even the Romance often has a Hero theme attached to it: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy suffers grief 온라인바카라 and loss, boy overcomes insurmountable obstacles to win back his lost love. Pure Hero Journey!
David Janssen did it in the TV series, The Fugitive. He was unjustly accused, he was on the run, he faced massive obstacles not only in staying ahead of the Law (the Villain) but in clearing his good name. He also managed to help people along the way and leave behind a string of women! Pure Hero!
There are many such movies, probably an endless string of them, but for some reason the Hero’s Journey lends itself extraordinarily well to the Western.
The Theme: Hero rides in, Hero saves the day, Hero rides out – usually leaving a broken heart or two behind. But a cold analysis such as this does not do it justice. There is an ethereal, almost other-worldly quality to these movies, especially the better ones.
In many cases, but not all, the Hero appears out of nowhere. His past remains a mystery and of course he himself does not talk about it. He is the “Man with no Name”. But some aspects of his past surface, almost unwittingly, as the movie progresses. For example, in Pale Rider, when Clint Eastwood has occasion to remove his shirt the audience can see the ugly holes in his back, where the bullets had penetrated.
Details of his Past are scant, but one thing is clear: Clint, the Hero had Suffered. It also transpires – again revealed unwittingly – that Clint, the Hero, had been left for dead. For example, in Pale Rider the Arch Villain expresses dismay and shock toward the end of the movie, just before the showdown. He says of Clint Eastwood, the Preacher, “It can’t be. He’s dead. I killed him”.
One can immediately see the parallel between Eastwood and Christ. Both Eastwood and Christ were Preachers, both suffered and both died. And they both return from the dead to do battle with their respective Demons.
There is a vengeance theme here. Clint, the Preacher, eventually catches up to his “Killer” and there is the inevitable showdown, but it is not a vengeance movie. Clint has hung up his guns, he has Buried the past and he has turned to the Bible. He literally has no gun for most of the movie. He had a violent past, that much is clear, but he has left that behind and replaced it with Preaching. But unfortunately for the Preacher, and fortunately for the audience, the violent Past catches up with Clint.
This is a constant theme in Hero Journeys: the return of, or to, the past, the beginning and the Righting of the Wrong, the original Wrong.
Also figuring strongly in Hero Journeys is the theme of the Hero Hanging-Up-His-Gun. But it is more than just “hanging up one’s gun”. The gun is the symbol of the past, a violent past, and hanging-up-one’s-gun is a symbol of Death. Death to the Past. The Hero puts it all behind him and turns to peaceful pursuits such as Preaching or cattle grazing or just plain retiring. But it is not the peaceful retirement and pleasant memories of a Pensioner. The Hero is Tortured by the Past and often turns to drink in an effort to obliterate his consciousness. Again we see the constant theme of Torture, Suffering and Death.