% — Sunday, November 10, 1991 — North Shore News

Black Robe: great Canadian cinema

BLACK ROBE is a movie
about native people that
Doug Collins and I couid
go see together and both
thoroughly enjoy.

Well, maybe it’s a trifle
presumptuous of me to pretend to
know what my unflinching war-
hero colleague might say about
anything, but I'm certain Doug
would enjoy it as much as I did.

Readers may have noted the lit-
tle jabs that sometimes go back
and forth between Doug’s column
and mine — affectionate jabs, |
hasten to add, since if Doug ever
decided to jab me unaffectionate-
ly, that would be it, wouldn’t it?
Doug’s a trained killer, for God’s
sake.

Which is partially why he would
enjoy Black Robe. Much as |
winced and whined at the vio-
lence, Doug would be assessing it
with a practised eye to see if the
special effects were up to snuff.
His main complaint would proba-
bly be: ‘‘That bloody idiot didn’t
die convincingly enough.”’

How could | argue? I'd had to
look away. There were a few of
these scenes — a child’s throat be-
ing slashed by an Iroquois medi-
cine man, the Iroquois chief cut-
ting the priest’s finger off, etc.

The reason we would both en-
joy it is because the characters
representing the lroquois, Algon-
quins, Hurons and Frenchmen are
presented unsentimentally.

The Iroquois come off as the
heavies, as indeed they were in
real life — and continue to be.

Bob
Hunter

STRICTLY PERSONAL

After an event like last year’s Oka
uprising, it behooves all Cana-
dians to go see a movie like Black
Robe as a reminder of how things
were when the shoe was on the
other foot.

The credit for the integrity of
the film must go largely to Brian
Moore, who wrote the script bas-
ed on his own book, although
director Bruce Beresford deserves
a standing ovation for the way he
brought Moore’s version to life.
This is the best-shot Canuck flick,
for sure. Makes your hair stand
on end visuaily.

There are no awards for pro-
ducing, but if there were, Robert
Lantos deserves one for scraping
together the megabucks it took —
$17 million — to get a risky,
totally unHollywoodish epic flick

Lanskail named chairman

FORMER WEST Vancouver
mayor and Greater Vancouver
Regional District Parks Com-
mittee chairman Don Lanskail
has been appointed chairman
of the Seymour Advisory
Committee.

The 18-member Seymour
Advisory Committee advises
the GVRD on educational pro-
gramming, policy development
and facility planning and de-
velopment in the 5,600-hectare

Seymour Demonstration Forest
in North Vancouver District.

The demonstration forest is
an example of integrated forest
management activities in a
park-like setting. The forest is
open to the public daity during
daytight hours.

An estimated 200,000 people
will visit the area this year. For
program and activity informa-
tion call 432-6286.

The program that helps students reach
their full potential in school or out.

© Time Management « Time Power / Goal Setting

e Listening « Note taking « Outlining

© Reading « Study strategies

« Test taking strategies

e 30 hrs. of individual instruction

North Shore
985-6311

onto the sc. een, especially after
Bethune, the latest attempt at a
“great Canadian film’’ bombed so
utterly.

For my money, Black Robe is
the best **Canadian’’ film ever.

The quotation marks are there
because Moore only lived in
Canada for a time, en route from
the U.K. to Hollywood, and the
director is of course Australian.

Ah well, the crew was Cana-
dian, so was the star, Lothaire
Bluteau, and the setting was
definitely west of Hochelaga.

Bluteau was the star of Jesus of
Montreal, one of the handful of
other Great Canadian Movies that
worked.

The role, as a Jesuit priest
determined to save the souls of
the savages (what we would
nowadays called a desperately
neurotic character), is shockingly
reminiscent of his ‘*Jesus’’ role,
where ke goes from playing Christ
to becoming a Christ-like figure.

In Black Robe, Bluteau is at
war with himself, externalizing his
torment by seeking to do battle
with barbarism itself. In his zeal
he clumsily tries to rearrange the
miltenia-old building blocks of en-
tire native cultures.

Along the way, through his
stubbornness and tunnel-vision, he
drags his Algonquin allies to their
doom and sets up the entire
Huron people for genocide. Only
the younger voyageur and his
Algonquin girlfriend escape.

As the story unfolds, we
journey from Champlain’s fortress
on the St. Lawrence to the edge of
Georgian Bay, with the Canadian

winter inexorably clamping its icy
death grip over everything except
the tiny human figures struggling
across the vast indifferent land-
scape.

The natives, speaking in their
own language, Jaugh at the white
men for being stupid and useless,
and the white men can barely keep
the contempt and loathing (and
fear) from showing on their faces.

To the natives, the Jesuit poses
a deeper threat than the Fren-
chmen who come armed with
muskets. How useful is a musket
anyway against a well-aimed ar-
row and hard training in the
bush?

Had it not been for disease and
being pitted against one another,
the natives might have waged a
long successful guerrilla war to
keep the white man out.

It was the priests more than the
soldiers who breached the reat
defences of the natives; their
fierceness, their independence,
even their .enophobia.

Doug, as ! say, might like Black
Robe because nobody is presented
in a romantic light. It is as real-
istic as any movie about Vietnam.

It is the forces driving everyone,
rather than any individual, that
the film finally examines, which is
what makes it a great as opposed
to merely good movie.

Me, I identified with the young
voyageur who ran off with the
girl. Doug might relate to the Iro-
quois chief. I can think of any
number of people he has tortured
already and laughed crueity while
doing it.

=

ANN MARIE SWEENEY,

BA., MS.W., LLB.
BARRISTER & SOLICITOR

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Rudyard Kipling wrote
these following lines as a
Canadian memorial. He
visited British Columbia
in 1889 and 1892 and
purchased 20 acres in
North Vancouver in 1897.

From little towns .
in a far land we'came,
To save our honour
and a world aflame.
By little towns
in a far land we sleep;
And trust that world
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—-Rudyard Kipling

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