In 1820 the Captain Henry Expedition, led by an Ahab like figure played by John Houston, has spent two years trapping in the unexplored wilderness and are struggling through the wilds towing a river boat on wheels pulled by 22 mules. Zachary Bass is a highly respected hunter supplying the expedition with meat. The foolishness of a novice hunter, which results in wounding a deer and an apology to Bass, the lead hunter, illicit the response, “Sorry never helped anyone, boy.”

Bass is then mauled by a grizzly and, through various graveside dramas, is left for dead by the expedition.

The bulk of the movie contrasts the ridiculous image of the riverboat, its mast towering among the trees, being dragged through a trackless wilderness, as Bass struggles to breathe, crawl and eat.

If made today, this movie would not be approved by the SPCA. The film is chock full of great lines and stuffed with looming allegory.

Captain Henry is a character in which the drama of the clash of civilization and the native cultures is played out, even as the drama of Man emerging from the primal wilderness is developed through the character of Bass, played by Harris.

The supporting characters are well wrought and well played and summon a host of period ghosts for the viewer. Some of the metaphors in the man versus the wilderness portions are overdone, like his nurturing of a domestic rabbit.

Zach’s dream sequences from his childhood give a brutal view of the lives of white children of the period, and go some way toward explaining his grit.

The treatment of the Indians is excellent, as this was the period after the Indian as disposable enemy decorating the white hero’s career and before the sainted vegetarian buffalo hunting pacifist hippies of Dances with Wolves. The tribe seems to be Arikara, and engage in hide painting as a means or reporting on the white man’s activity. There are also depictions of the natives inserted—probably spuriously—into the story from Bass’s viewpoint, in order to show how harsh their life was, and that they had much to fear from rival tribes.

The story really kicks off when the two men—left to stand over Zach Bass as he dies and then bury him—become frightened with Indians coming along and debate whether or not to stay with Zach until he dies and if the prayers should be read from the bible, as directed by Captain Henry. Here are some lines from the old cuss looking over him as he dies:

“A man ought to know when his time’s up.”

“Let him read it himself on the way to hell!”

The story progresses on to an improbable Hollywood ending, that is really an attempt to wrap up the entire question of the American Frontier in a scene.

Overall the story is excellently written and serves as a good period study, if seen through an atheistic lens. The latter is not too disconcerting—even in light of my impatience with Hollywood’s atheistic bent—considering that it is not overdone, and that Christianity, as generally practiced in North America during this period, resembled our current ruling elite’s neo-con excuse-making for military adventure more than anything we might currently view as theology. The film does present views of period Christianity, at a personal level, in both a positive and negative light.

There is a brilliant exploration of the right-leaning man of action’s view of his woman, as a type of domesticated shamanistic figure that is not too far off from the conquistador’s veneration for the Mother Mary.

The writing and the performances of Harris and Houston, along with realistic depictions of the native inhabitants of the wilderness, draws a tightly focused picture of a man caught between two worlds, and not a part of either.

Zach Bass is a compelling figure, and in this film is much less anachronistically Hollywood than he might have been.