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. Bluteau is excellent in this bleak film, which includes some of the most meticulously researched representations of Native American life ever put on film.
(12 votes)
2.
Forget about Kevin Costner's sun-kissed, water-colored, Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves. Black Robe, which was directed by Bruce Beresford, a director who gave the world the finest film of the early '80s Australian new wave, Breaker Morant, and who continually collides cultures and ethnicity in his films (Mister Johnson, Driving Miss Daisy), matches and surpasses the Costner epic as an expertly crafted, brutal saga of redemption and salvation. In 1634 a young French Jesuit missionary is assigned to trek 1,500 miles through the New France wilderness to a mission settled in Huron Indian country. Black Robe chronicles the journey of Father Laforgue (Lothaire Blutheau) as he leaves his Jesuit brothers and, with the aid of a young translator and guide, Daniel (Aden Young), and eight canoes of Algonquin Indians, moves into the uncompromising Canadian northern territory on a die-hard mission to convert the natives. Mixing elements of Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans and Roland Joffé's The Mission, Beresford offers a restless tale of Laforgue's conflicted faith juxtaposed against the sublime spiritual harmony with the land that the Huron and Algonquin already hold. Black Robe dances to its own drummer and is tuned into the precarious balance between nature's mystery and spirit and the strident, unyielding religious ethic. The cinematography by Peter James is relentlessly cruel and bleak, but it absolutely conveys the obstacles that face the idealistic and blind young priest, who by the end, has faced his own awakening. The film also features one of the late, great composer Georges Delerue's most noble scores. --Paula Nechak
3.
"Superbly intelligent. A triumph!" -The New Yorker
From acclaimed director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy, Tender Mercies) and adapted by screenwriter Brian Moore from his novel of the same name, Black Robe is "amazing…and adventure film that is as intelligent as it is enthralling" (US Magazine)!
French Jesuit missionary Father Laforgue travels to the magnificently austere Canadian wilderness to save the souls of a "savage and godless" people -- the native tribes of the Huron and Algonquin. But the natives, who have their own spiritual value system that differs drastically from Christianity, are immediately suspicious, resentful and openly hostile toward the intrusive "Black Robe". And when Laforgue fires a reluctant group of Algonquin to escort him on a harrowing 1500-mile journey up the broad and sinuous St. Lawrence River, a devastating chain of events not only causes him to question his deeply held beliefs…but also forever changes the course of history for the natives' way of life.
4.
In the winter of 1634, an extraordinary man began a perilous journey into the North American wilderness...
In the rugged 17th century Canadian wilderness, Father Laforgue, a young, idealistic Jesuit priest, is assigned to go up river into the wilderness on a perilous journey to convert the Huron Indians. His Algonquin Indian guides nickname him "Black Robe." His young aide and translator, Daniel, falls in love with Annuka, the beautiful daughter of the Algonquin chief.
Torn between his own desires and ideals of the priesthood, Laforgue's faith is tested as the expedition faces the elements. Attacked, captured and brutalized by hostile Indians, the traumatic experience challenges everything the young priest believes. Together with his young companions, he escapes to complete his mission and comes to understand the true spirit of the land and the spirit he sought to convert.
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