Black Robe (1991)
Directed by Bruce Beresford
Source: Amazon Prime
About 30 years ago I saw this sad but beautiful film. I didn’t see it again until this week. On the grand scale, it’s about the clash of cultures. On the personal level, it's about Father LaForgue (Lothaire Bluteau), a decent, devout Jesuit from a wealthy French family, who goes to New France (Canada) to bring Christ to the Huron people. The year is 1634, a time of conflict between the French and Huron on one side and the Iroquois on the other. The film opens in the settlement of what would become Quebec. Father LaForgue is sent by Samuel de Champlain to a distant village, with his French assistant Daniel (Aden Young) and a few accompanying Huron guides, led by Chomina (August Schellenberg). Along their journey, they meet with great hardships as well as brutality, first from the Montagnais, a tribe whose hostile shaman Mestigoit (Yvan Labelle) calls Laforgue a demon and encourages the Huron guides to abandon him, which many do. An attack by the Iroquois leads to scenes of brutality. LaForgue finally arrives at the distant mission alone, only to find that all but one of the French inhabitants have died, either of violence or smallpox. The leader of the Hurons in that remote region asks LaForgue if he loves them. LaForgue answers yes, remembering the faces of all the Indians he has met. The Hurons, suffering from smallpox, are baptized, and the film ends with a sunrise. A title card states that 15 years later, the Huron, having accepted Christianity, were attacked and killed by the Iroquois, and that the mission was abandoned, the Jesuits returning to France.
Black Robe is a complex and deeply moving film that touches on many issues that are current today. Performance, production, and music are all excellent. I liked it as much as I did when I first saw it in 1991; maybe more.
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Chomina, who continues to guide LaForgue because he has promised Champlain that he would do so. Later, Chomina, wounded by the Iroquois, chooses to die in the snow, to await the She-Manitou.
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The Montagnais shaman Mestigoit
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As the film draws to a conclusion, Father LaForgue begins to realize that perhaps the religion of the Huron and his own religion, though totally different, are all part of the same divine plan. As he walks alone to the Huron Mission, he says: "What can we say to people who think dreams are the real world, and this world is an illusion? Perhaps they’re right. The forests speak. The dead talk at night.”
Black Robe is staggeringly beautiful, shot in the Canadian wilderness of Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean, with some scenes shot in Rouen, France. The film has been praised for its accuracy in the depiction of the Indians of the time.
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