WOMAN WALKS AHEAD Review – Does it Paint an Accurate Picture of an Artist?
In her Woman Walks Ahead review, Staci Layne Wilson asks about artistic license
By anyone’s account, Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain) was a badass and deserves her place in America’s Old West history. At a time when women were considered just a notch above chattel, Catherine was a renowned artist, a free spirit and an outspoken activist for human rights. She was told “no” by many men, but she forged ahead in doing what she believed was essential – whether it was for her commitment to art or to the people she cared about.
The film picks up in the late 1880s, when the recently-widowed Swiss-born young lady travels alone from bustling Brooklyn to the roughshod Standing Rock Reservation in Dakota Territory on a mission to paint the first and only portrait of Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes). As she gets to know and like the legendary Chief, she takes it upon herself to single-handedly help the Lakota hold onto land that the government was bent on wresting away.
Woman Walks Ahead is based on true events, but of course some artistic license is taken with history and speculation on the true relationship between Weldon, Sitting Bull, and key members of the U.S. Army (Sam Rockwell and Ciarán Hinds). Susanna White (Bleak House) directs with a deft hand, but Steven Knight’s (Peaky Blinders) disjointed script doesn’t make her job easy.
While Chastain and Rockwell are the top box office draws here, the real stars are Greyeyes and the director of photography. Greyeyes has the gravitas and commanding presence one would expect in someone as storied as Sitting Bull, but he’s also got an innate elegance and tenderness to him. Cinematographer Mike Eley (My Cousin Rachel) captures everything from a lazy lizard sunning itself on a rock to the dramatic assassination of Sitting Bull with equal beauty, grace and grit.
When all is said and done this is a solid, if highly fictionalized, Western biopic that brings a largely forgotten historical feminist figure to light. If it encourages just a few viewers to do some research, then Woman Walks Ahead is worthwhile.
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Rated R
102 minutesIn her Woman Walks Ahead review, Staci Layne Wilson asks about artistic license
In her Woman Walks Ahead review, Staci Layne Wilson asks about artistic license
I just finished viewing the movie Woman Walks Ahead. I absolutely LOVED it. I was somewhat familiar with the Lakota Sioux history and the Ghost Dance. I did not know about Catherine Weldon. Now I am reading up more about her story.