Explaining Yancey's wanderlust
They never really explain WHY it is he needs to constantly desert his family.
Even if he did leave the second time to go to the Cherokee land grab, it doesnt explain why he leaves the third time. (The time he comes back "after 5 years" and his children say "Daddy!" was hilarious: those kids would not be "happy", theyd be hysterical/confused, perhaps even hostile. They would not say "Oh, Daddy's back!" and go on as normal. They would be severely traumatized! By both the abrupt separation and the abrupt appearance. And, of course, by the abrupt re-separation later.)
And then they find him in the oil fields? He's been living in Oklahoma. He must hear constantly about his wife and family, and that his wife has been elected to Congress(!) His children are having their own children. And he wants to have nothing to do with that? He allows them to be tortured by not communicating with them at all (so they don't know if he's dead or alive)? He surely doesn't hate them-- but does he love them so little to treat them like that? It's selfish. It's pathological. He needs help! But everyone in the film seems to say "Oh, that's just our Yance!"
I'm wondering if they're some modern interpretation of his psychological condition. I would think that this type of abandoning would have to do with abandonment issues in his own childhood. And that he would not be the high-functioning and socially respected person that he was. That is, along with his abandonment issues he'd also have other pathologies: eg, alcoholism, spousal abuse, antisocial behavior. Or, perhaps the reason he "needs to get away" is that he's actually not attracted to Sabra, that he's secretly homosexual. Or, perhaps he's mildly autistic or psychopathic-- he really does -not- have an attachment to other human beings, that he can throw them away so easily.
If you actually love your wife, if you actually love your children, you just do not abruptly leave them for many years, return, leave again, for any reason save the survival of said wife/family itself. And clearly, when he leaves, its for his own, unexplained, personal reason(s).
In the very end, we find him in the oil fields, toiling at an apparently low-level job in anonymity. He sacrifices himself to save a large group of people. Certainly not the act of an autistic or psychopath. But certainly the act of someone who would love his wife and children and children's children and would want to share his life with them! So why did he abandon them?!
The movie doesnt seem to address just what a weird person this Yancey is.