Growing up, didn't it seem like you always covered the same topics in history? Every year, you learned about Jamestown, the Mayflower, the first Thanksgiving, then you'd get to the American Revolution and (maybe) the War of 1812 and stop. The rest was left for high school, we guess, though we picked up most of it on our own (and that most of what we had learned was more folklore than history) from the History Channel or by watching too many movies.
It's always seemed weird, then, that there are so few films about pre-Civil War America. Or, for that matter, pre-America America. Sure, we remember watching the Johnny Tremain Disney movie and way too many Daniel Boone VHS tapes as a kid. But with all the force-feeding of creation myths in schools, where is our cinematic propaganda? Where's the treacly George Washington biopic bathing his apocryphal cherry-tree chopping in a magic hour halo of light and a John Williams score?
In all seriousness, there's a rich vein of American (and Native American) history left unportrayed on film. Which is a shame.
Michael Mann did his part to fill the void with The Last of the Mohicans. Adapted from James Fenimore Cooper's classic (but slightly arduous for modern readers) Leatherstocking Tales, this is the story of Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis) the adopted European son of Chingachgook (Russell Means), the titular last of the Mohican tribe. Hawkeye does his best to stay out of the turf battle between the British and French taking place in and around his upstate New York trapping grounds (a little tete-a-tete later called the French and Indian War). But when Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe), the gutsy daughter of a British general, needs an escort to her father's camp, he volunteers. When the escort party ends up mostly slaughtered and Cora kidnapped by Magua (Wes Studi), the nefarious Huron allied with the French, he vows to find her. Guess how it ends?
Wildly romantic and lushly shot, Mohicans is filled with the grandeur and adventure that can only be mustered by classic Hollywood epics. It's quite a departure from the rest of Mann's oeuvre, which is mostly filled with chilly, slow burn crime thrillers with one word titles (Manhunt, Thief, Heat, Collateral). In researching this review (yes, we do research!), we discovered that the 1936 version is the first movie Mann can remember watching. Clearly a passion project for the director, the movie bursts with nostalgia: from the swelling score to the gorgeous landscape, everything feels like a film memory the first time you see it.
Needless to say, Day-Lewis is fantastic. His sardonic intensity and dangerous physicality are perfect for the enigmatic Hawkeye. Madeleine Stowe is an ideal Jane to his Tarzan: sharp and daring. Means and Studi make you wonder why Hollywood didn't crank out Native American epics every single year in the 90's, as they had two readymade stars executing in top form.
We're not qualified enough to opine on whether the film's treatment of the lives and dynamics between the different groups (Natives, colonists, foreign military) is truly accurate. To that end, we're not sure the ending, with Means solemnly intoning about the loss of his way of life and all the characters' ways of life, is truly earned. But with that glorious view of unspoiled wilderness and manipulative underscoring, it sure feels like it.
FINAL VERDICT: KEEPER
NEXT UP: DANCES WITH WOLVES
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