| Black Robe | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Bruce Beresford |
| Produced by | Robert Lantos Sue Milliken Stéphane Reichel |
| Written by | Brian Moore |
| Starring | Lothaire Bluteau Aden Young Sandrine Holt Tantoo Cardinal Gordon Tootoosis August Schellenberg |
| Music by | Georges Delerue |
| Cinematography | Peter James |
| Editing by | Tim Wellburn |
| Distributed by | Samuel Goldwyn Company |
| Release date(s) | September 5, 1991 (premiere at TIFF) October 4, 1991 (USA) February 27, 1992 (Australia) |
| Running time | 101 minutes |
| Country | Australia Canada |
| Language | English Latin Cree Mohawk Algonquin |
Black Robe is a 1991 film directed by Bruce Beresford. The screenplay was written by Northern Irish-Canadian author Brian Moore, who adapted it from his novel of the same name.
The film's main character, Father LaForgue, is played by Lothaire Bluteau, with other cast members including Aden Young, Sandrine Holt, Tantoo Cardinal, August Schellenberg, Gordon Tootoosis and Raoul Trujillo. It was the first official co-production between a Canadian film team and an Australian one. It was shot entirely in the Canadian province of Quebec.[1]
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Set in 1634, the film begins in the tiny French settlement that will one day become Quebec City. Jesuit missionaries are trying to encourage the local Algonquin Indians to embrace Christianity, with thus far only limited results. Samuel de Champlain, founder of the settlement, sends Father LaForgue, a young Jesuit priest, to find a distant Catholic mission in a Huron village.
LaForgue is accompanied on his journey by a non-Jesuit assistant, Daniel, and a group of Algonquin Indians whom Champlain has ordered to guide him to the Huron village. This group includes Chomina (August Schellenberg) - an older, experienced traveler who has clairvoyant dreams; his wife (Tantoo Cardinal); and Annuka (Sandrine Holt), their daughter. As they journey across the lakes and forests, Daniel and Annuka fall in love, to the discomfort of the celibate LaForgue.
The group meet with a band of Montagnais Indians who have never met Frenchmen before. The Montagnais shaman is suspicious (and implicitly jealous) of LaForgue's influence over the Algonquins. He accuses him of being a devil. He encourages Chomina and the other Algonquins to abandon the two Frenchmen and travel instead to a winter hunting lodge. This they do, paddling away from the Frenchmen. LaForgue accepts his fate, but Daniel is determined to stay with Annuka and follows the Indians as they march across the forest. When one Indian tries to shoot Daniel, Chomina is consumed by guilt at having betraying Champlain's trust. He and the other Algonquins return with Daniel to try to find LaForgue.
As they recover LaForgue, a party of Iroquois attacks them, killing Chomina's wife and taking the rest captive. They are taken to an Iroquois fortress, where they are beaten and told they will be slowly tortured to death, only after Chomina's young son is killed before his eyes. Annuka helps them escape by seducing a guard with sex. Chomina, dying of a wound from his capture, freezes to death in the snow; LaForgue tries, unsuccessfully, to persuade Chomina to embrace Christ before he dies. When Chomina dies, he sees the She-Manitou appearing to him.
Annuka and Daniel take LaForgue to the outskirts of the Huron settlement, but leave him to enter it alone, because Chomina had dreamed that this must happen. LaForgue finds all but one of the French inhabitants dead, murdered by the Hurons who blamed them for a smallpox epidemic. The leader of the last survivors tells LaForgue that the Hurons are dying, and he should offer to save them by baptizing them. LaForgue confronts the Hurons.
When their leader asks LaForgue if he loves them, LaForgue thinks of the faces of all the Indians he has met on his journey, and answers "Yes". The leader then asks him to baptize them, and the Hurons accept Christianity. The film ends with a golden sunrise. An intertitle explains that fifteen years later, the Huron were massacred by the Iroquois, and the French mission was destroyed.
Political activist Ward Churchill, after praising the film-making highly, criticized historical inaccuracies.[3] He said he thought the film vilified the Mohawks as part of a theme that Indian resistance to European culture was evil.[4]
Black Robe grossed $2,036,056 at the box office in Australia.[5]
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