Review: Woman Walks Ahead

Focusing on a mostly forgotten meeting of the minds between Swiss-American artist and activist Caroline Weldon and Lakota Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull, Woman Walks Ahead would seem a compelling opportunity to foreground characters that have been traditionally relegated to stereotypes and one-dimensionality in the Western drama. Whilst the film is solidly crafted and the central figures beautifully embodied by Jessica Chastain and Michael Greyeyes, its impact does not quite match the reach of its ambitions.

The film begins in 1890 as Weldon casts off the shackles of widowhood and travels from New York City to the Dakota Territory in order to paint a picture of Sitting Bull. On the train, she encounters Colonel Silas Groves (Sam Rockwell) who pegs her to be a liberal spy since no proper woman would be traveling alone to be amongst the Native Americans if she wasn't either a soldier's wife or a missionary. In fact, none of the white folk are particularly pleased at her presence, one even spits right in her face as she steps off the train. Moreover, commanding officer James McLaughlin (Ciarán Hinds), who has an Indian wife, strongly advises her to turn right back around and return to the East. Catherine, however, will not be swayed.

Eventually, she is introduced to Sitting Bull, who agrees to pose in exchange for $1,000. Their blossoming mutual respect for one another awakens her activism and rouses him from his dejection, but also raises the ire of the townsfolk, the tribesmen and the U.S. Army, the latter still regarding the Lakota chief as public enemy number one after his involvement fifteen years earlier in the defeat of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer in the Battle of Little Bighorn. The spectre of Sitting Bull's imminent death hangs over the proceedings, which would have been more elegiac had the filmmakers perhaps taken less liberties with the facts.

Far from being the naive and ignorant woman presented here, Weldon had already been taken with Native American culture since adolescence, taught herself Lakota, and had joined the National Indian Defense Association before she began her fateful journey to meet Sitting Bull. One wonders if scenes between the two would have been strengthened had they been on somewhat equal footing. Instead, one is presented with scenes like the one in which Weldon recounts the root of her fear of horses, or the one in which she averts her eyes as he disrobes and changes into traditional garb. To be fair, the filmmakers never take their relationship beyond the platonic but the implication is marked enough to be noticeable.

Chastain adds Weldon to her gallery of headstrong and self-reliant women but, excellent though she is, there's something that feels somewhat dampened and too mannered in her playing. Greyeyes, by contrast, delivers a sensitive and soulful performance that deserves a far better framework than the film allows.

Woman Walks Ahead

Directed by: Susanna White

Written by: Steven Knight

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Michael Greyeyes, Sam Rockwell, Ciarán Hinds, David Midthunder, Bill Camp, Louisa Krause