Woman Walks Ahead (2018)
Directed by Susanna White
Written by Steven Knight
Starring Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes, Sam Rockwell
Release Date June 29th, 2018
Published October 5th, 2018
Jessica Chastain is, arguably, the best actress working in Hollywood today. She’s a magnetic force, she draws you toward her character effortlessly. She’s tough yet wildly charismatic and even in a lesser movie like Woman Walks Ahead, she maintains a level of excellence that exceeds the limitations of a weak script or soft direction. In Woman Walks Ahead Chastain manages to overcome historical inaccuracy to craft the essence of a true story infused with a faux romance.
In Woman Walks Ahead Jessica Chastain portrays Caroline Weldon, a painter from New York City whose husband has passed away. With him gone, she’s free to pursue her passion which is portrait painting with a specialty in portraiture. Caroline has had Senators and Governors sit for her portraits but her next famous painting is unquestionably her most ambitious. Caroline wishes to travel west to paint a portrait of the Native American Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes).
Caroline is met with resistance to her plan almost immediately. On the train to the Dakota territories she’s met by an army Colonel (Sam Rockwell) who assumes she’s a liberal agitator out to stir up an already tense political dispute over a new Native American treaty. The Colonel warns Catherine to stay on the train and go back to New York and when she doesn’t he makes sure she is left at the station.
Not about to give up, Carole walked the several mile distance from the train to Standing Rock where the Calvary and the Indians live next door to one another in a tense state of détente. In town Caroline is once again told to go home, this time by the Mayor (Ciarin Hinds) who orders her locked in a cabin to be forcibly taken to the train station the following day. This doesn’t happen however as Caroline is taken to meet Sitting Bull the following day and unusual friendship begins.
Woman Walks Ahead is loosely based on a true story. Caroline Weldon was a painter but also a Native American ally and activist, something left out of the movie. Weldon went to Standing Rock as much to protest the Dawes Act as to paint Sitting Bull’s portrait. She did befriend Sitting Bull but when Sitting Bull committed to fighting against the Dawes Act with violent resistance, he and Weldon disagreed vehemently and the division drove the two apart before Sitting Bull’s murder.
The movie builds a romance between Chastain’s Catherine and Michael Greyeyes’ Sitting Bull that is pure invention and arguably, not a needed invention. The romance would be purely filler if Chastain and Greyeyes didn’t have explosive chemistry. There is a smolder between these two actors that turns a perfunctory, tacked-on romantic plot and it makes it feel vital and alive. There may not be any sex in Woman Walks Ahead but there are enough longing stares to fill a lifetime.
Woman Walks Ahead was directed by television veteran Susanna White. White takes quickly to feature filmmaking with good instinct for pace and tone and a few risky scenes of violence, one of which really turned my stomach with it’s severity and yet the film still held me in place because of my investment in these characters and this sort of true story. It’s the truth dressed up with a little melodrama to make it go down easy and that’s likely where White’s TV training came in handy.
Woman Walks Ahead works because Jessica Chastain is a great movie star and an even better actress. She’s charismatic and fierce throughout capturing just the kind of tenacity it must have taken for a single, 44 year old New Yorker to board a train for Standing Rock amidst one of the most tense moments in the history of our relationship with American Indians. It took guts to do what Caroline Weldon did and Jessica Chastain exemplifies gutty in Woman Walks Ahead.
One last thing I want to mention, the score of Woman Walks Ahead is superb. George Fenton was responsible for the score and the mournful, melancholy plucking of a guitar has rarely been so moving. It's a sublime listening experience on top of being perfectly in line with the tone of the film which isn't entirely melancholy but has a certain foresight of sadness to come that lingers in the air and the score perpetuates that air brilliantly.
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