Posted: 1/28/2003 6:13:12 AM EDT
|
I'm not sure if you remember our conversation out at the farm, but, "All the Kings Men" was, in fact, written by Robert Penn Warren. And BTW, what was that movie about the Canadian frontiersmen you were refering us to? I'm headed to Blockbuster later today. |
|
Thanks! I am a devotee of Robert Penn Warren, who was a Professor at LSU in Baton Rouge, and while there at LSU, he founded and edited, along with Cleanth Brooks and Charles W. Pipkin, the literary quarterly, [b]The Southern Review.[/b] The movie which I mentioned to you, at the Farm, was [b]The Black Robe.[/b] It is a 1991 French-Canadian production, but do not let that put you off! [:D] Who better to put together a film of such high drama in the 1600s? Here's a good website for the movie: [url]http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?PID=1150576&frm=sh_google[/url] By the end of the movie, you will wish to get back on the boat and return to the Old World, as fast as you can! Here is a thumbnail sketch of the movie: "Director Bruce Beresford's abiding fascination with the clash of cultures is apparent in this adaptation of Brian Moore's novel of a Jesuit missionary who leaves France in 1634 to bring the word of Jesus to the Huron tribe of rugged northern Quebec. "The film, which stars Lothaire Bluteau as LaForgue, casts aside the revisionist notion of the Native American as an enlightened being, superior to Caucasian interlopers, depicting the Huron world as one of ugliness and harshness. "The missionary's arrogance blinds him to the Indians' preference for their own religious rituals over the faith he is attempting to thrust upon them. Yet, in his new proximity to nature and exposure to primitive mores that shock him, the priest begins to feel the bonds of his asceticism and question his faith. "Finally, after being captured and tortured by a party of Iroquois, he begins to evince the compassion with which the conversion of the Hurons becomes possible. The tragic ramifications of this process are only revealed many years later. [b]"Bluteau is excellent in this bleak film, which includes some of the most meticulously researched representations of Native American life ever put on film."[/b] Eric The(TwoThumbsUp!)Hun[>]:)] |
|
BTW, it is in French and Algonquin with English subtitles! Rather than detracting from the film, this fact serves to heighten the sense of abject loneliness that the main character must likewise be undergoing in the story. You will never feel warm enough again. This film was made in the Winter in Northern Quebec! Eric The(FilmCritic)Hun[>]:)] |
|
I think you guys will both enjoy it a lot! Just remember that it portrays a very, very hard time in human history. One that was full of both the hope of new discovery, and the realization that there was no paradise on this earth. Here is a link to Roger Ebert's criticism of the movie. [url]http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/1991/11/678497.html[/url] He didn't like it much at all! Too damn bad! He did have some good things to say about it though: "The architectural details of the Indian dwellings, their methods of hunting and food procurement, the way they used absolute cooperation and trust of each other as a weapon against the deadly climate - these are all made clear in the movie." "The first contacts between North American Indians and Europeans were probably a great deal more like those depicted in "Black Robe" than like the stirring adventures in "Dances with Wolves." "Black Robe" is a film of enormous interest for those who care about the early history of Europeans in North America, but for ordinary moviegoers it will be very tough going. It is a much more rigorous and despairing work than a novel like Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock, which tells the story of the French in Quebec with serenity and an unshakable faith in human nature. And at the end, there is no deliverance." Heh-heh-heh, I loved it! Eric The(Fascinated)Hun[>]:)] |