The following review makes reference to the 2017 film Woman Walks Ahead and does not contain spoilers.

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Year: 2017
Category: Biographical, Drama.
Director: Susanna White.
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Sam Rockwell, Ciarán Hinds, Michael Greyeyes, Chaske Spencer, Bill Camp, Luce Rains, Rod Rondeaux, Louisa Krause, Boots Southerland, Kindall Charters, Jacob Browne, Rulan Tangen, Monika Crowfoot, Debbie Black Lance, David Midthunder.

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Plot

It tells the Catherine Weldon story, her trip to Dakota and her relationship with Sitting Bull.

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Opinion

Woman Walks Ahead is a film that takes a real story that happened in the 19th century and covers it with the modern narrative of feminine empowerment while criticizing the conventional model of society, showing the Catherine Weldon story, a woman who during her youth loved to paint but she had to leave it because her father considered that it was not appropriate for her, and later her husband, of whom she does not seem to have good memories now that he died, did not allow her either. However, she is still young and a widow so instead of getting married again she decides go to Dakota to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota leader, however, on the road she will find the constant opposition of the masculine world and of a population that does not have a good relationship with Native Americans.

The story swings between romance, the political drama of the white men and the natives, and the personal journey of the main character played by Jessica Chastain. The photography is very good and the narrative is slow, at the beginning the story seems to have a clear direction, but later it gets derailed and tries to cover more topics, and that is why it fails. Michael Greyeyes as Sitting Bull does a good job, but it is stereotyped, somewhat ironic considering the vision that screenwriter Steven Knight, the same writer of Locke, wanted to convey here, but luckily the platonic relationship that develops between the characters of Greyeyes and Chastain is valid and becomes the strong point of the film.

The director Susanna White has a long career in television, where she directed episodes of the series Generation Kill and Boardwalk Empire and many others, however, her film career is recent and scarce, she directed Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang in 2010 and Our Kind of Traitor in 2016, and previously we only found a short called Bicycle Thieves in 1997. She does a good job here, technically accurate, however, it is not anything special either.

All the actors do their job very well, but there is a big problem, only the Greyeyes and Chastain characters were written with a decent development, the rest of the characters seem accessories and narrative elements, so the work done by the actors is in vain, Chaske Spencer and Sam Rockwell only appear when is convenient and we never understand their behavior, because they are relegated to a very secondary participation, on the other hand, Ciarán Hinds participation is completely wasted, limiting practically to almost nothing.

In short, it is a film with some technical successes but slowly becomes boring until finally loses its way because tries to go to many different places and does not succeed when trying. It's not bad, but it could have been something much better, and about the historical veracity of the film, you better not ask me about it, because about this story I do not know anything, and the movie did not generate enough interest, so I did not investigate the real events.

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Trailer

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Score

6/10