Seeking Sustainable Development in McCabe and Mrs. Miller

 

Most western films with mining at their center examine dichotomies between corporate and small time miners or between miners and ranchers or farmers in traditional ways, with the individual miner usually defeating the corporate miner or rancher. The conflicts in these westerns continue the big guy versus little guy theme found in other western films; yet the mining on display, no matter how buried in the action-packed plotline, reveals environmental issues worth exploring—those associated with both mining and the long-term consequences of mining techniques themselves. These issues and their consequences are especially evident in McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). We assert, then, that McCabe and Mrs. Miller not only reveals that environmental history but also proposes a more effective way to maintain the ecology of the mining West: sustainable development. In the mining westerns we viewed, the conflict between corporate and individual miners also reveals two conflicting views of ecology: fair use methods of corporations and sustainable development aspirations of individuals wishing to maintain resources for future generations of a growing community. McCabe and Mrs. Miller highlights a more effective way to maintain the ecology of the mining West: sustainable development.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller focuses on zinc mining and comments on environmental consequences of mining techniques, responding to an environmental history that highlights the dangers of unrestrained land ownership. The film both perpetuates and blurs the dichotomy between two “classes” of miners, while examining ecological issues in both obvious and opaque ways. The debate between miners and their methods of destroying or sustaining the land continues in western films, whether in relation to a sampling of classic Anthony Mann westerns, cult westerns from Budd Boetticher, or revisionist westerns from Sam Peckinpah, Robert Altman, and Nils Gaup. We contend, however, that mining westerns like these grounded the conflicts they illustrate in an environmental history that has not as yet been resolved. McCabe and Mrs. Miller reveals that environmental history and proposes a more effective way to sustain the ecology of the mining West. McCabe and Mrs Miller also responds to a mining history and culture that was a product of the General Mining Act of 1872. The General Mining Act of 1872 is a United States federal law that authorizes and governs prospecting and mining for economic minerals, such as gold, platinum, and silver, on federal public lands.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller rests on a naturalist philosophy and takes a connection between dying men and a dying landscape even further than Ride the High Country, since the film’s hero, McCabe (Warren Beatty), literally dies in the snow, his body buried in a blowing drift while the rest of the town of Presbyterian Church attempts to put out a fire burning down their house of worship. The film also grapples with the same “big guys” versus “little guys” conflict found in other mining films, catalyzing with an altercation between McCabe and a mining corporation from Bear Claw, the town down the mountain from Presbyterian Church, but in McCabe and Mrs. Miller, the community nearly fails and is either bought or destroyed by a corporate mining company. The mining company wants to buy McCabe’s holdings and take over the town, but McCabe holds out for too much money and is killed after a long shootout with the corporation’s assassins. In McCabe and Mrs. Miller, eco-resistance destroys corporate gunslingers. But McCabe and Mrs. Miller illustrates the cost of that vigilante justice: the death of a hero and the community he attempts to build.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller deconstructs the Western genre, blowing up the hero myth McCabe at first seemed to represent. The film does not valorize violence or a Western hero. Instead, McCabe hides in an open shed and shoots his pursuers stealthily and out of fear. The community works together to put out the church fire. McCabe fights alone. He eradicates the three faces of the corporation, so the community can rebuild itself on the values of a church rather than the brothel both McCabe and Mrs. Miller have left behind. But neither McCabe’s death nor Mrs. Miller’s departure are valorized. Instead, extreme close-ups show McCabe’s snow-covered body and ice-streaked face and Mrs. Miller’s oblivious opiate stare, two views that illustrate their powerless state. McCabe and Mrs. Miller confront nature and build a business community, confront a mining corporation and seem to succeed, even in the face of their own sacrifices. But they die in the face of change and represent a dying frontier and the drive toward a more traditional community like that in Pale Rider. In McCabe and Mrs. Miller the community members won’t quit. Instead, they will build homes, schools, churches, raise their families, and sink roots—just as they did in Pale Rider. And those roots rest on zinc mining without the corporate interference that kills off towns and community ideals.