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I don't understand the ending of the movie and was wondering if anyone else can shed some light on the rest of the movie after Tommy Lee Jones drops off the three women. Thanks for any and all help you can give!
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Just saw this movie last night, and I have to admit, I liked it a lot. Tommy Lee Jones brings in this aura, reminiscent of (IMO) The Hunted(2003), sort of like a biblical story. It reminds me of Moses and the Exodus of the Jews to their "promised land." This may be somewhat vague, let me explain: When Briggs completes his "quest" to bring the women back east to a better place, he finds that he has no real place in the society. He buys expensive clothing, lives in a (to what he has formerly known) luxurious setting, and has all the power that money (sort of a God metaphor?) has to offer. Yet, all these things don't really add up, and he finds himself dismissed from the society that he wants to be a part of, when his Golden Ticket, i.e. the money, fails to hide his rough accent, his deeply lined face, and the eastern Americans sense that he doesn't belong around them. In the bitter end, I think, after George Briggs has passed on the memory of Mary Bee Cuddy as best he can, he rejects the civilization that has shown him such a lack of respect after all his trials/tribulation, and he, like Moses, cannot truly enter the formerly mentioned promised land. He crosses the river west, to his wild and lawless Territories, the only place he knows he belongs, and, honestly, I don't think he cared that Mary Cuddy's headstone was lost. He has already immortalized her in his actions and in his heart, and it is in this final scene that he scorns the civilized East in favor of the rough and often barbaric home he has survived, learned, and lost so much to.
Interesting. I had a slightly different take looking at it as a deconstruction of the western genre. Westerns typically are about civilized society under threat and then saved by rough people (almost always men) who ultimately can never fit into the very culture they've protected. That's why the hero typically rides off into the sunset at the end.
In this, we have this sort of going on with the ne're do well character helping to bring these broken victims of a rough life back to civilization. And the twist reveals how even the strongest women can be broken by this harsh life. At the end, he of course cannot fit in and after making the effort, goes back to his previous ways.
I just watched this last night and there is a lot to unpack. I found it all very sad but I think this is one of those movies that I'll appreciate much more days after having given it more thought.
I can fully agree with your view on the western genre and the anti-hero stereotypes that are a bit of a staple in more recent movies, (I think older films often present the white-hatted good guy protecting civilization) but there are many exceptions to this in either case. George Briggs certainly is a rough man helping Mary Bee Cuddy out, but before her death his actions are, explicitly, only for the money she has promised him. It is the result of her death that interests me, and that, I think, is the key to understanding the end of the film.
You are also spot on in seeing it as a very thoughtful film, as full of nuance as it is of very human characters. I don't see the film as a war of the sexes(women are weaker than men, or vise a versa) but as more of a study of their reactions to rejection and guilt. Mary is rejected every time she attempts to find a man who will marry her, and I see this as a longer line of nuptial failures than the screen shows. We are never told why she first moved out to the Territories alone; perhaps she was married and her husband died or left, but the fact remains that she is consistently rejected by men and she feels a strong sense of justice towards women who she sees that are vulnerable and need her help.
Briggs is consistently rejected by society (kicked out of the shack in Loup, almost hanged, almost shot in the face by the guy who failed to hang him, etc) but he shows no guilt for having deserted the US Dragoons, squatting on someone else's land, or even leaving Mary alone in the wilderness. Through the film, up to the point of Mary's death, he is working only for his own gain, though he does show kindness to the women he is escorting even risking his life.
Mary is a strong person and this begs the question, why would she abandon her mission and simply end her own life? There is a breaking point for everyone, and I think hers was at the final rejection of Briggs, this guilt-less miscreant, to her incredibly generous proposition of marriage. She loses something right there and then and ends her life the next day. Briggs, being typically guiltless, heads off almost immediately but then something happens that even he doesn't see coming.
He sees one of the women, helpless in the stream and reaches his own breaking point. In that moment he realizes how much effort, strength, and raw heart Mary had to bring those women this far, and he finally feels guilt for his actions. This is the driving force of his continuing on to bring the women to where Mary promised she would take them. It is my opinion that Mary, losing faith in her male companion and hope to find a partner, devised a plan to ensure that the women made it to their final destination. I don't say this as a malicious or manipulating course of action, but her action absolutely paved the way for Briggs to find his soul again and was her final reaction to his rejection of her: the loss of herself for the greater good of the three women.
This is much longer than I meant it to be, I have just been thinking about this movie for some reason. Maybe I wanted to "solve" the mystery of Mary's death or something. This theme of rejection seems to fit the movie, even at the end when Briggs is rejected yet again, but haunted by Mary's death reacts by returning to where he found and lost her in the western territories.
I think she hanged herself because she saw herself ending up like the three crazy women in the end and alone. She just gave up after so much rejection. Either that or George was the worst fuq ever!🤣
Boy that would kill your self esteem. Lol
What an underrated and smart film about the hardships women faced in the frontier as well as how strong and heroic they were. Cheers to this thoughtful beautifully acted film.