Postgraduate screenings: Ulzana’s Raid Event

Ulzana's Raid is one of several westerns made during the late 1960s and early 1970s that used the genre to draw parallels, explicit or otherwise, with the ongoing war in Vietnam. Criticised at the time for its supposedly reactionary depiction of Native Americans, the film avoids both the bloodthirsty and noble savage stereotypes, focusing on the contrasting, competing and irreconcilable masculine codes of a US Army platoon and the Apache raiding party they must apprehend. The white soldiers regard themselves in terms of discipline, morality and faith, while the Apaches are driven by a need for an elemental form of power that will restore their true warrior status after enforced confinement on a government reservation. As the distinction between pursuer and pursued becomes increasingly unclear, the imposition of one civilisation over another reveals incomprehension and barbarity on both sides.