In present day we often hear the term “I see you” invoked as a compliment, a sign of recognition and appreciation: I understand what you’re doing. I respect the person you are. I SEE YOU.
For a long time in director Anthony Mandler’s stark and unforgiving and bloody Western “Surrounded,” nobody sees Moses “Mo” Washington, a freedwoman and former Buffalo Soldier who is traveling West in post-Civil War America to stake her claim to a gold mine for which she possesses the deed. Whether Mo is ordering coffee in a raucous tavern or hitching a ride on a stagecoach or enduring the dismissive treatment of a racist woman of means, she is not seen. She claims to be a young man, and she keeps her hat tilted low over her visage, and everyone just believes her because they’re not really looking at her anyway. Yes, she is free, but she is a Black woman in 1870 America, so she is also invisible.
