# 51 John Wayne Walks AwayMovie: The Searchers (1956) (Etsijät)
http://www.ign.com/top/movie-moments/51 (1:26)
John Ford's masterpiece ends the way it began; as the tale starts, a door opens in darkness to reveal the light and majesty of the Old West landscape outside. And as the film comes to a close, that same door is shut, the story over, while John Wayne's antihero Ethan Edwards is left alone on the outside, walking off in the distance.
The film offers an ostensibly happy ending -- Edwards is successful in saving his niece from the Indians who abducted her years earlier -- and yet our protagonist is essentially left out in the cold while everyone else gets to go home. Is it because he's as "savage" as those who had kidnapped his niece, a Confederate relic from a war long since over who has no place in modernity? Because he's a lone gun, eternally destined to wander? Who can say? Maybe Ford just thought it looked cooler this way, but it's a telling moment -- and a truly iconic one.
John Ford's masterpiece ends the way it began; as the tale starts, a door opens in darkness to reveal the light and majesty of the Old West landscape outside. And as the film comes to a close, that same door is shut, the story over, while John Wayne's antihero Ethan Edwards is left alone on the outside, walking off in the distance.
The film offers an ostensibly happy ending -- Edwards is successful in saving his niece from the Indians who abducted her years earlier -- and yet our protagonist is essentially left out in the cold while everyone else gets to go home. Is it because he's as "savage" as those who had kidnapped his niece, a Confederate relic from a war long since over who has no place in modernity? Because he's a lone gun, eternally destined to wander? Who can say? Maybe Ford just thought it looked cooler this way, but it's a telling moment -- and a truly iconic one.