How sad is this?

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The directing of this film was outstanding in it's ability to portray the extreme hardships of woodsman of the 1800's. Beautiful scenery in this movie offers a perfect setting to a palpable story of courage and resilience in the unforgiving world of a Western fur trapper. The courage and compassion that Zach Bass (Richard Harris) embodied as he struggled to survive a credible and graphic vicious bear attack, made this main character admirable in his will to survive. The scene of him speaking to his yet to be born child, still carried by his loving wife, showed a deep sensitivity within this character that balanced his tough exterior. The Native American portrayals showed intelligence in that it gave a very respectable human face to a deeply spiritual Nation. It is a remarkable cinematic achievement at all levels and should be recognized as such.

This film is ostensibly about a man (Richard Harris) who is left for dead by the leader of his expedition into the Northwest Territory in early 1820. As other reviewers have pointed out, there actually was a man mauled by a grizzly who managed to survive in much the way that Richard Harris does in the film. In this respect, it is based upon a true story.This film actually has only three main characters: Zach Bass (Harris), the expedition leader (John Huston), and the Wilderness. The photography is stunning. And the Zach Bass theme is beautiful and haunting. The film is full of action and excitement, as revenge stories usually are. Bass survives by his courage, by his strength, and by resourcefulness.And on that basis alone, this film is an enjoyable movie experience.But this movie exists on an additional plane that moves it from being just a great action movie to instead being a great film.The movie it is most like is the John Wayne/John Ford film The Searchers. In that movie, John Wayne's search for his niece is actually his search for inner peace, which he finds by not seeking revenge but, instead, by finding his capacity for love and compassion.The "Wilderness" in this film is actually the wilderness in Zach Bass' mind--memories of a life full of regret and loss. As he works his way back to Huston to exact his revenge, he actually is working his way to a better mind, which by the end of the film is no longer a wilderness. It is, instead, a place of love, with, finally, clarity of purpose. The film is almost flawless in its execution. It is beautiful, moving, exciting, and touching. There is very little "dialogue" because the wilderness has its own richness of dialogue. Richard Harris is a fine actor. This is his best film, in my opinion.I first saw Man in the Wilderness almost 40 years ago. And I have allowed myself the pleasure of its company every few years since. And I will for many more years.

This movie depicts a true-life adventure and recounts the incredible, nay, fantastic story of famed mountain man Huge Glass, who in 1822 became part of a hundred man expedition originally led by general William Ashley to 'assend the great Missouri'. In the film " Man in The Wilderness " Richard Harris plays Zachary Bass, who is part of a scouting/hunting party for the over all expedition. Accompanying Bass are a young Jim Bridger and experienced hunter John Fitzgerald. Trailing an elk, Bass unfortunately surprises a mother Grizzly, who fearing for her cubs, attacks Bass who instinctual fires two shots at her. It then escalated into hand to hand combat with Bass stabbing her with several deep knife wounds before the bear succumbs and dies, but not before leaving Bass nearly dead and torn asunder in a bloody mess. Consequencly, the men who accompany Bass decide due to the sever loss of blood, gashes and deep wounds, is not expected to live and bury him in a shallow grave. John Huston is the expedition's Captain Filmore Henry, who makes the decision to leave Bass behind. Henry Wilcoxon is impressive as the Indian Chief and James Doohan (of star trek fame) plays Benoit. The harrowing challenge for Bass is remarkable as he struggles to get help from a frontier post in the dead of winter, nearly two hundred miles away. The movie is to say the least incredible, but being it's Richard Harris, we conclude his acting efforts have created a Classic. Well done! ****

Far from the arid deserts and dry arroyos of Arizona and Texas, the goldfields of California and the rowdy cattle towns of Kansas and Missouri, before the Mexican or the Civil War, indeed before the frontier myths that shaped America's collective consciousness into a coherent nation were even tall tales told around a fire at night or spectacles to be toured around the country by wild west shows, the war for another kind of America was being fought. Loosely based on the 1818-20 Missouri Expedition, director Richard Sarafian, the very same year he carved on the face of cinema the name Kowalski and the beautiful sight of a Dodge Challenger R/T tearing through empty stretches of asphalt with the indomitable VANISHING POINT, created another kind of western.A stark gritty survival story that veers between the vividly realistic and the dreamlike, between a plot and no plot, between the story of a man coming to terms with his past in a journey of self-discovery revenge and redemption and the Sissyphian story of a ragged band of half-crazed mountain men towing against all hope a large boat borne on wheels through the mudfields of the Oregon Territory, if anything, MAN IN THE WILDERNESS cannot be accused for not trying to succeed on its own terms. At the beginning of the film the expedition's scout, Zachary Bass (Richard Harris), is mauled half to death by a bear. The leader of the party, Captain Henry (John Huston) leaves him to die and pushes on towards the Missouri River, pressed on by the bands of Indians that roam the territory.From this dichotomy the story moves in two different directions. On one hand we see Zachary Bass make a terrible painful recovery from near-death, having to fight wild dogs for the raw meat of a dead buffalo, building fires against the coming cold with twigs and branches, laying traps for food, traversing the rocky terrain in pursuit of the men who abandonded him, witnessing on his way scenes both of random violence and unexpected joy, his anguished return from the dead interspersed with flashbacks to his childhood. On the other hand Captain Henry, the stark realist, the grizzly pioneer dressed in his doublebreasted jacket and high-top hat, the monomaniac navigator of uncharted lands, standing rigid and steadfast on the deck of his boat like some other Captain Ahab, toiling away in the mad voyage he elected for himself, not even knowing yet he's carrying his boat to a dry riverbed, being haunted by guilt and remorse for the man he left behind.If the imagery of a boat filled with poetic metaphor towed through a stark hostile landscape reminds us of something Werner Herzog once did, it must be said that Sarafian was there years before either AGUIRRE or FITZCARRALDO and one year before Sydney Pollack would tackle similar motifs with the frontier western of JEREMIAH JOHNSON. The themes that resound through the movie, men set against a savage land that bears them false witness, the confidence of the director to avoid explanatory narrations and rely on minimal dialogue, the beautiful open vistas (the movie was shot in Andalucia, Spain - not far from where Sergio Leone made filmic history), the iconic monomaniac antagonist played by the great John Huston (not quite the despicable Noah Cross he played for Polanski's CHINATOWN three years later, more human this time, with the capacity for surprise and defeat), the violent final battle that has enough mud and grime to make the closing battle in SEVEN SAMURAI look polished - everything comes together to paint MAN IN THE WILDERNESS as another sadly overlooked gem of American cinema. My only complaint, apart perhaps for the lack of a better score, is that Sarafian didn't probe 'enough' the depths of his story and the world it takes place in. Given the characters, setting and story, there's an even better movie lurking somewhere in there...