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Film
Review |
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Black Robe (Canada and
Australia, 1991). Directed by Bruce Beresford. 101 mins. In French, Algonquian
and Iroquoian with English subtitles. VHS and DVD available generally. |
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World historians traffic in the intangible—diasporic cultural interactions, the global impact of the New World silver,
biologic "exchanges"—that transcend region and, on occasion, obscure human
agency. Whatever their scholarly merits, such abstractions can deaden a
classroom, supplanting the very thing that interests students: real lives.
And while including films may do much to leaven a course, the medium inherently
lends itself more to the portrayal of events than processes. Black Robe's
usefulness as a classroom tool emerges from its ability to depict vividly
not just the experiences of individuals but the concept of cultural encounter,
so dear to instructors and textbooks alike. |
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Moreover, while many students know something about
the conquest and displacement of Native Americans in the eastern United
States, the story of eastern Canada is much less familiar. Here, along the
St. Lawrence River and into the Great Lakes, 17th century French colonies
relied so much upon local peoples to extract the region's one exportable
commodity—beaver pelts—that they could not afford the Indian enmity.
It is in this world of French and Indian interdependence that novelist and
screenwriter Brian Moore sets Black Robe's tale of two groups struggling—and ultimately failing—to understand one another. |
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At the center of the story is the courageous but
dangerously naïve Father Laforgue (Lothaire Bluteau), a Jesuit priest called
"Blackrobe" by the Algonquians guiding him to a distant Huron (Wyandot)
mission village. Before they can reach that village that is Laforgue's goal,
however, they are waylaid by Iroquois, adversaries of the Algonquians. Though
the film follows Father Laforgue, it is no less the story of his companions.
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This rich film (it won best film honors in Canada
for best picture, director and cinematography) pairs beautifully with the
chapter "Canada and Iroquoia, 1500–1660" from historian Alan Taylor's
particularly accessible American Colonies (2001). Taylor's description
of the Iroquois' "mourning wars" as the heartbreaking convergence of virgin
soil epidemics brought on by Europeans and the Iroquois' cultural mandate
to replace lost kin through forced (and sometimes violent) adoption is grippingly
recalled in the film's torture scenes. |
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Black Robe also dramatizes Taylor's
analysis of the consequences of seventeenth century transcontinental arbitrage.
Prior to the European arrival, animist inhibitions had restrained hunting.
The strong market incentives created by European demand for North American
pelts challenged and eroded these inhibitions. Despite a few inaccuracies
(the Iroquois eschewed sex with future adopted kin, despite scenes to the
contrary), the film offers an ideal springboard for class discussions of
cultural encounter precisely. While Black Robe respectfully portrays
the worldviews of its protagonists, the film never lapses into romantic
sentimentalism or simplistic victimology. |
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Fritz
Umbach
John Jay College, City University of New York |