MY THOUGHTS ON BEN WADE  (Jo)

(As I write this on September 11, 2007, I've seen 3:10 to Yuma 5 times and talk about it

here and there on Russell sites. But as a lot of people haven't seen it yet, I thought I'd

put my thoughts here so it would be known that they contain massive spoilers and you

can avoid it if you've not seen the movie yet!  I'm not putting these forward in any way

as the definitive, correct thoughts on the character of Ben Wade, only that they are my

personal take on things. And it is because I'd like to write stories with Ben that I'm

trying to coalesce my thoughts so I can access them more easily for that.)

The first thing that I noticed about Ben was his quietness and the pleasure he found in his separateness.

There he is, having set in motion plans for a large group of men to attack an armored coach and you

get the feeling that though he is aware of every aspect of everything, he's...detached...from it. I imagine

there were many years in the past where Ben rode with a gang, and there were probably other gangs

before this gang, as they attacked a stage, a train, whathaveyou. But something in Ben is different

from that younger version of himself and he is very nearly in another dimension from his outfit.

Yet...still...he is fully in control, so very in control that he can be in that dimension, that space

where they are not able to follow.

But, poking the head of his horse, the sound of his words, through the boundaries of Ben's dimension

comes Charlie...Charlie who, as we come to see, lives in his own dimension, the height, width, and depth

of which is formed by the person of Ben.  Ben, in his apartness, has been sketching a hawk, not a thing

one expects an outlaw on the cusp of a huge robbery to be doing. Instantly, then, Ben is taken out of

the ordinary and into the extraordinary. Ben is...different. He's also not particularly pleased that his

personal space has had its edges trod upon, but he says nothing. One suspects he is used to it, this

invasion, that it happens rather regularly, but he takes it as the hand he's dealt at the moment and

just gets on with it.

But before he does, he silently rides up to the tree and attaches his sketch of the bird to a small branch.

He's signed it. In the lower right corner he's written "Wade".  As an artist myself, I know you do not

sign a piece until you have pronounced it finished. He has been interrupted, would probably have

spent more time on the sketch had Charlie not come, but he has pronounced it finished. It is because

he has decided it is. That is all the time he had for it, therefore it is finished.  He is in charge of it, in

control of it, and now it is done because his time for it is done.  A signature on a piece of art is also

a way of claiming the art, of saying "I did this"..."This is my work."  Yet he leaves it on the tree, a

hole poked through a blank part of the page, and never looks back. 

I am an appreciator of moments. I take photographs (see Jo's Other Place) when I am able, to remember

a certain moment, how a particular sunset looked, how a child looked when she was singing as she ran

through the grass, how the rain dripping off pine needles looked in the foggy morning.  If I have no

camera at the time, I take a picture with my mind and when I'm home, capture the moment with words.

I think Ben was an appreciator of moments and he captured them in his own way when he could, with

a sketch.  He does that with three moments in the movie, so they are really trying to tell us something

about Ben with that.  But whereas I store my moments on a webpage or an album or in a frame, he lets

his moments go, lets them slide from his hand with no sense of possession. He was there...it was a moment

he lived, a moment that was special for him in some way...yet he has no attachment to it after it is passed.

It's how he's learned to live his life, unattached.

Charlie is fascinated by Ben's differentness.  He holds Ben rather in almost some sense of awe, never

calls him by either his first or last name directly, but only "Boss"...a constant acknowledgement of

Ben's position and authority. There has been some discussion of just how far Charlie's feelings for

Ben go, but whatever you decide, I think they flow from Charlie to Ben and are not returned, though

Ben would be well aware of them. Charlie cannot just ride by and not take a slight detour to see what

Ben has put on the tree.  He has to see because it is Ben who has made it.

Everything is so in place, everyone knows so well what to do, what is expected of them, that Ben doesn't

have to say a word when it's time for the hold-up to begin.  There are two things here at the beginning

that bring Gladiator to mind...the head rising and turning to follow the flight of the bird, and when

Ben is sitting on his horse way up the ridge watching the battle, he is rather like Marcus Aurelius in

Germania. 

We have a sense that Ben, from his position, is aware of the "big picture" of what is happening in the

valley, in charge of it though removed from it, and stepping in with the solution when things don't

seem to be going so well.  Though he dwells on Sinai, he knows when it's time to part the Red Sea.

Which brings me a bit early to his being 8 and reading the Bible.  The three days it took him to read

that in the train station were the defining days of his life.  That that was his occupation during that

time has melded into the fabric of those days and is irrevocably part of them. It was as he read the

Old Testament that he still had hopes his mother was coming back, but by the time he got to the New

Testament, he had to be getting steadily more consumed with the fear that she was not. Reading some-

thing, anything, as your hope is fading and your fears are rising is bound to color whatever it is you

read.  Russ himself has said Ben is stuck in the Old Testament. I think this is why. It was that first

part of the Bible that came through more clearly to him as he began his wait.  It probably sank into

him better, made a bigger impression on him, and he ended up with the God of Vengeance and not

the God of Love.  How can an eight-year-old find the God of Love all alone in a train station when

he's begun to realize that not only has his father just been killed, but his mother has abandoned him?

If you're going to latch onto anything at that time, it will be the God of Law, of Judgment, of

Vengeance that is so easily found in the Old Testament if you don't know where to look for Who is

actually there all the time.  You have been left, you have been abandoned, and absolutely everything

around you is wildly out of control, especially out of YOUR control. You simply cannot let that

continue beyond some point where you can have some say over it.  So you become the deity of your

own personal world, your own dispenser of justice and vengeance, the writer of your own laws, and

you are separate...like the God that dwelt on Sinai...apart like you came to feel that God was apart

from you yet still had power over you. And you realized that you were superior, that you thought

more than others around you, were aware of more, were more gifted and, looking down from your

heights, you saw that they were merely red ants on a hill, nothing more.  They simply didn't matter,

had no real value beyond how they could serve what you needed in a certain moment, rather as

a hunter might look at the deer who feeds him. The deer, being an animal, is not capable of the

thoughts and values of the hunter.  And he came to feel quite justified in this outlook as the people

he met tended always to confirm to him that they were animals.  It is that that makes Ben a

sociopath, not some innate evility of nature. 

Because he feels so separate, he's developed this code of behavior wherein he serves his own purposes

through gentlemanly manners.  He doesn't do it because he feels other people deserve to be treated

in such a way, but because it makes people like him and lets him get away with what he wants to get

away with.  His manners are part of his manipulative equipment.  He's being nice to the ants, well,

some of the ants, not all of them, so that they will bring him their crumbs and not sting him. There

are those ants that just do deserve a fork in the neck! And why should he feel badly about that? It

was, after all, merely an ant, and a particularly low-level, disgusting one at that. Heck, there was

always smiting all over the place in the Old Testament, wasn't there? 

Which now brings me to...names. Our two protagonists both have Old Testament names. Daniel is

perfect for our Mr. Evans. Daniel, who, no matter how surrounded he was by evil times and worse

men, always did the honorable, true thing. Daniel, who even the ruler over the evil men came to

respect, came to try and protect from them, came to honor because of his devotion to what was

right.  And Benjamin, whose mother died at his birth as Ben's mother died for him in a very real

way the day Ben Wade was born on that bench in the train station.  As she died, Benjamin's

mother, Rachel, wanted to name him Ben-Oni, which means 'son of my trouble', but Jacob named

him Benjamin instead, 'son of my right hand.'  As Benjamin was born on the road to Bethlehem

but never quite got there, so our Ben never quite got there, either.  And so our Old Testament

Ben Wade rather saw himself in some oblique way as the right hand of God, dispensing judgment

and justice where needed.  He even named his gun 'The Hand of God', just to make the point.

In the end, when Charlie proudly hands 'The Hand of God' back to Ben, completely out of tune

with what's going on in Ben,  Ben looks at the gun, runs his thumb pad over the silver crucifix,

and then basically executes judgment, vengeance and justice with it. That first shot would probably

have caused Charlie to die given a few moments, but Ben walks up to Charlie and pulls out

Charlie's own gun to use as the coup de grace.  I had to think about that one for a while, why

he did that, what that meant to him to do it that way.  I think he knew 'The Hand of God' had

done its work but he wanted something further, some bit of statement as a finishing stroke,

that the very gun Charlie had lived by, he would now die by, that he had brought this on himself

with his own actions, by what he had just done with that gun.  I'm getting ahead of myself here,

but this is how my thoughts are coming. Or...it could be something as simple as that Ben's own

gun was, at that point, empty and he needed another gun for the final dispatching bullet. Not

quite so interesting, but probable.

Dan had become for Ben the single man he saw as, other than himself, not an animal. It had

come grudgingly, even unwillingly to him, but it had, nevertheless, come.  He saw his own outfit

as animals, said so clearly to William, and now this animal had killed that single man.  The look

he gives Charlie, the very 'vibes' coming out of him toward Charlie, are so potent that Charlie

feels them even though his back is turned and he's walked some bit away.  When he turns, still

in disbelief at what he's sensing because he has no idea why Ben would be feeling what he's

feeling, he recognizes the look, he's seen it before, but not quite so intensely as he's seeing as

it's directed at him.  Tommy, back by the upsidedown coach, saw a milder version of the look

and instantly recognized his own death in Ben's eyes. It is the veritable lightning bolt of God

descending from the heavens. You tilt your head, your hair standing on end, and you see it

coming, but there is no escape from it.

Meanwhile, back at the opening robbery. Ben has fired four shots to get the cattle to move...

a clever ploy that William copies at the end. So when Ben walks up to the coach, he has only

two bullets in his chambers and he uses one to dispatch Tommy and the other the Pinkerton.

He reloads and does a neat little double twirly-twirl Cort would be proud of, probably just

because he enjoys the feel of doing it.  I don't think he had any real need to impress his men

at that point, so I think he did it for himself because he wanted to.

Then he notices Dan and his boys on the rise. He knows nothing of Dan yet, only that he

obviously has two sons with him, and he greets him with his accustomed politeness as he

tries to scope the man out, keeping his right hand on his pistol handle just in case more

than manners are required.  He makes a judgment in the matter and since Dan cooperates

with that, nothing untoward happens. Dan, of course, doesn't believe he'll ever see his 3

horses again...which would be a huge loss for him...and when he finds them where Ben

said they'd be, that's the first of the surprises Ben has in store for him.

I like it that you think only Ben and Charlie are riding into Bisbee and only later see that the

entire outfit is spotted around here and there, stepping out of alleys and corners. It lets you

see again just how trained this particular pack of wolves are and makes a further statement

about Ben as leader.  One reason I'm not particularly concerned with what Charlie does or

does not feel toward Ben is the way Ben centers in on the saloon girl.  His gaze instantly goes

out and wraps around her like a force field and never relents.  From the moment he sees her,

it's constantly there except for the brief moment when he expounds on Tommy's execution,

quoting, as usual, from Proverbs where most of the rules for behavior are found in the Old

Testament.  Then, when everyone else is gone, you are almost painfully aware of Charlie's

awareness of Ben's force field around the woman.  This he's seen many times before and this

he's not particularly fond of...but he will wait. He'll be near and he will wait.  Ben says,

"All right, Charlie," knowing that Charlie likes to wait, not really caring if he waits or not,

but aware that he will.  It doesn't matter to him and he doesn't even look at Charlie as he

says it.

Again Ben has a moment, a moment when he is separate from his outfit, alone with something

he wants to capture in a sketch, a brief thing to say 'this moment was' and I liked something

about it. But, as usual, the sketch remains behind as does the moment. Somehow it is deity

reaching out its hand, briefly laying its palm on the earth to say 'I was there', and then letting

the wind blow the imprint away without regret. "I made the imprint but I am neither glad nor

sad that it is past. I simply...am."

But even Ben, engaged by this new man he's not yet classified, can be taken off guard. Though

surprised, though not pleased about it, yet still he has a certain regard that Dan could manage

to engage him so. He'd not expected Dan to be capable of that.                

I've heard it said that this is a buddy movie, a very different buddy movie, to be sure, but one

nevertheless.  I think there's a truth to that as the arc of the story is the arc of how these two

men relate to one another.  Dan is actually the more reluctant of the two, more determined to

keep his original opinion of Ben.  Always he calls Ben "Wade", though Ben refers to Evans

as "Dan." Ben, though, is an observer and when he is around during the scenes whenever Dan

is relating to his son, we see Ben's careful eyes on the whole thing.

I want to depart from this for just a moment then get back to it to end with. But there are two

sentences in the movie in which I found other Russell characters leaping off the screen at me.

The first was at dinner and is the third line Ben says about what might have happened to Dan's

leg...the one about the Indians stealing it. It's surely not in his accent, heaven knows, but in his

manner, his facial expression especially and in his tone that all of the sudden Captain Aubrey

at his own dinnertable was distinctly there! The other was in the hotel room in Contention when

Ben makes his remark to Dan about squeezing the watch not stopping time. This go round it IS

all in the accent and the voice...but John Nash says that line for me.  Notice if you haven't before.

The whole Ben/Dan thing gets replayed in the final arc of the final dash for the depot. Ben tries

to protect Dan, is glad when the bullet is in his artificial foot, warns him when a gunman comes

up behind him, has Charlie alert the sharpshooter to take out a man who poses a threat. It's

impressive all Ben does to help Dan. But...then...Dan directs him to run through a particular

door and as he does, Ben is shot in his SPQR, um, upper left arm, his blood splatters on the

door as he passes by and he's getting tired of this whole thing. It's here that his relationship

with Dan reaches its lowest point. Ben wants to walk outside, calls to Charlie that that's what

he's going to do, but then Dan grabs him from behind.  Now Dan, at that moment, has become

nothing more than an obstacle to what Ben wishes to do. Ben does not like obstacles to what

he wishes to do and starts to choke the life out of Dan. Ben is, after all, still Ben.  But then Dan

gasps out the story of how his foot was lost due to friendly fire from his own men in retreat and

how do you look in the eyes of your son after you tell him that.  This is the defining moment in

the relationship.  This is when the decision to kill transforms into the decision to let Dan get him

to the train.  That moment is...everything. It's not what Ben wants to do, what he believes is best

for him himself to do, but once made, it is made. He has decided that this other person IS a

person. 

The highpoint is when they are in the little depot and Dan looks at Ben and explains that he is

not stubborn. That Dan feels the need at all to explain this to Ben is the clearest statement of

where he's gotten himself, very, very grudgingly, completely unwillingly...yet he cares that Ben

should understand this about him.  And then they both smile.  A few seconds only.  But there

it is.  Two men exchanging a smile in the midst of inferno.  A neat moment. Very neat.

And it is with a smile that Ben turns and looks down at Dan through the bars on the rail car,

saying how Dan did it.  But then the animal kills the one other non-animal.  When Ben hops

off the train and looks down at Dan, you feel somehow that even though Ben hates that this

has happened, that he's not all that surprised because the world is just gosh-durn awful like

this and what more can you really expect. But Ben really wanted this one man to live, wanted

him to go back to his ranch and be a husband and a father.  He's very...displeased. Charlie,

looking back at Sodom, becomes a pillar of salt.

Charlie, in his way, kept the pack of wolves onleash when they had problems with Ben. With

Charlie dead at their feet, they had to be dispatched as well, quickly, efficiently, instantly.

When people talk of Charlie and what parts of the movie could be taken certain ways, I

find the most telling portion of the film to be during that final dash to the train. Charlie

is almost spastic with fear for Ben's safety when he sees the townsfolk are not differentiating

between shooting at Dan or shooting at Ben. It's almost more than Charlie can bear. Charlie

obviously cares a lot more for Ben than Ben would ever consider caring about Charlie. Charlie

is...was...after all, merely an animal.

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