The utter domination of the male gaze over Hollywood.
This film is a convulsion of violence embedded in great natural beauty and accurately portrays the birth of a nation.
The great struggle for money, life and space is played out by groups of men: European and American colonisers and Native American tribesmen alike.
The Native American women who fleetingly appear are victims, supplicants, domestic drawers of water and, in the case of the protagonist’s wife, a ghost. The one woman drawn into the violence is, on being rescued, a vengeful castrator of the male tormentor.
And who can blame her? It’s the only way for women to get noticed in Tinseltown!
Notes on THE SEA 