Trigger Warning: The following references PTSD, suicide, and violence.
The Big Picture
-
Hostiles
challenges traditional Western tropes by portraying characters dealing with mental illness and grief head-on. - Sgt. Metz’s struggle with PTSD and depression ultimately leads to his tragic end, highlighting the lack of understanding in his time.
- Capt. Blocker and Rosalee find different paths to healing from grief, showcasing the characters’ evolution throughout the film.
Gone are the days of the unshakable cowboys like John Wayne. In their place has arrived a more updated and nuanced Western character that is emotional and self-reflective. Enter Scott Cooper’s neo-western drama Hostiles. If any Western film takes on mental illness and the nature of war’s consequences on men, it’s this one. In a genre that often has little or no focus on mental health as it relates to the time period referred to as “The Wild West,” Scott Cooper delivers a film that tackles it head-on, making the subject a big part of the plot and its characters.
Hostiles follows the journey of Capt. Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) as he reluctantly leads a team of Union soldiers, including a brief appearance by Timothée Chalamet sporting a French accent, on an escort mission to Montana with the goal of getting a Cheyenne war chief and his family there safely. Capt. Blocker initially doesn’t want to go as he and Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) are old enemies. Through the various gunfights, deaths, and challenges that the escort group face, reflections of grief, and PTSD are shown through many of the characters but specifically in Capt. Joe, his longtime friend, and right-hand, Sgt. Thomas Metz (Rory Cochrane) and a rescued woman named Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike).
Hostiles
In 1892, a legendary Army Captain reluctantly agrees to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory.
- Release Date
- December 22, 2017
- Runtime
- 127
- Main Genre
- Western
- Studio
- Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures
What Is Sgt. Metz Struggling With Emotionally in ‘Hostiles’?
Early in the film, Sgt. Metz reveals to Blocker that he feels he has no further purpose since he has been told he has “the melancholia” which was the way depression was referred to by some during the time this film takes place. Blocker dismisses the claim, something that would later come back to bite him as he, nor most people at the time, knows nothing of how to handle something like that. Metz also reveals they even took his guns from him as a precaution. Blocker chooses Metz to go with him on escort duty as a way of giving him a renewed purpose, even granting him his sidearms back. Capt. Blocker could not have realized at the time that the mission would be the very thing that pushes Metz to the brink.
Sgt. Metz makes several indications that he is suffering from PTSD due to his time in the various conflicts he was a part of. He has a callousness towards violence and is depicted discussing graphic details with little emotion. He talks of trouble sleeping from nightmares, and a general sense of being out of place and lost. He also carries around some immense guilt from some of the things he had done previous to when we meet him. This is shown most clearly when he has an emotional breakdown during a rainstorm and begs Chief Yellow Hawk and his family for forgiveness. Shortly after this, Metz uses an opportunity of chasing down an escaped prisoner in their party to end his own life. A tragic end to a man grossly misunderstood by his military peers.
How Do Capt. Blocker & Rosalee Quaid Handle Grief in ‘Hostiles’?
The very first scene in the film is where Rosalee Quaid’s entire family is brutally murdered by hostile Native Americans. When the audience catches up with her, it is when Blocker’s group finds the scene of the attack perhaps only hours afterward. Rosalee is clutching her recently killed infant child, not able to bear the reality that the child is dead, even denying it outright to Blocker and his men. Eventually, Rosalee allows the burial of her family and accepts what occurred. She is in shock and grieving in the most extreme way when she is first introduced. She even recoils in terror at the sight of the Cheyenne Natives that Blocker is escorting.
With Blocker, the grief and depression he experiences are more compounded and repressed. These states arise most prominently when he finds Sgt. Metz after his suicide. Blocker is constantly trying to come up with justifications for what he did during his service in the military, never giving himself a moment to fully grasp the emotions surrounding it. All the vague yet horrendous acts that other characters refer to are simply part of the job for Blocker, or at least that’s what he says. When Blocker loses Sgt. Metz, he breaks down as if he’s losing someone close to the conflicts of the past that should be behind him. The consequences of war over many years take yet another life, opening up all the old wounds that Blocker had kept at bay.
How Does ‘Hostiles’ Portray Healing Grief?
Both Capt. Blocker and Rosalee find differing levels of healing from their grief through the end of the film. Even though Blocker is presented as a brute and a racist at the beginning of the film, he finds a way to see things from a different perspective, slowly treating the Cheyennes in his care with more humanity. The same goes for Rosalee, where at first she is terrified of the Cheyenne, due to her trauma from losing her family, she is able to separate them from the Native Americans that were hostile. Although nothing can excuse Blocker’s behavior and the history of him that the film gives us, he comes to a place that is much better than when first introduced, even defending the remaining Cheyenne family members with his life. The final moments of the film show Rosalee with the last surviving child of Chief Yellow Hawks’ family in her care, and a changed Joseph Blocker boarding a train at the last minute to stay with them.
Hostiles may not be the deepest or most action-packed western out there, but it is still worth watching if for nothing else than to see how a filmmaker handles such a delicate topic in a setting that was anything but. The very inclusion of a focus on mental health in the film was a risk that paid off as it maintained the drama of the events through scenes that did not necessarily have any dramatic action going on at the time. Since mental health is universal it speaks to contemporary issues real people face, even if it is done so in a way critics may dislike.
Hostiles is currently streaming on Starz in the U.S.
