A Very Bare Look At The
Native American (Indigenous People, If You Prefer) Experience In America-The
Film Adaptation Of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last Of The Mohicans: A Narrative
Of 1757 ” (1992)
DVD Review
By Alex Radley
The Last of the Mohicans,
starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine
Stowe, based loosely on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826 and an earlier
film adaptation in 1936, 1992
I am grateful to Greg
Green the site manager at this publication for giving me, a stringer, a chance
to break into the film review department which these days according to him drives
a lot of what goes on here. Greg approached me about doing a review of the film
adaptation of James Fennimore Cooper’s The
Last Of The Mohican since I was the only one he contacted that had not read
the book and he did not want the political types around here like Frank
Jackman, Seth Garth and Josh Breslin to get their hands on the thing and go on and
on about the screwing of the Native Americans, the indigenous peoples who
populated this continent way before the Spanish, English, French and who knows
maybe the Russians staked claims to land not their own. To speak nothing of the
later decimation once those bloody English colonists got their independence and
went after those peoples hammer and tong. Didn’t want (and he told me to make
sure I go this into the review) to hear about the destruction of the land, the
trail of tears and the contemporary situation with the plight of the indigenous
population although he was painfully aware since his ex-wife was part Lakota
Sioux (the guys who gave General Custer all he could handle and more at Little
Big Horn) that some terrible injustices have been done to those peoples. Also
Greg did not want to hear (although he did not ask me to make a point of saying
this so I am doing this on my own hook) about how James Fennimore Cooper knew
nothing about Native Americans in upstate New York, except maybe what he heard around the taverns that he
reportedly frequented where he got whatever he knew about anything and used that
to run the rack on a bunch of woodland gothic romance novels which would have embarrassed
any Harlequin Publications romance novelist.
Since I qualified on all
counts I got the nod, got the nod too when after viewing the film I mentioned to
Greg (and to Sandy Salmon who I assume told Greg that I had not read the book because
I don’t recall telling anybody else here that information when the question
came up around the water cooler one morning) that I liked the film very much
even if there was more gore and off-hand violence than necessary. He asked me
to skip that observation but when I said it would be hard to write the review
without mentioning that violence he said put it here before I got to give the
reader the skinny and forget about it later. (I admit I am a rookie but I never
heard the word “skinny” as a way to say tell the story before I landed here and
I kept hearing an old guy, a bent over old guy who looked about one hundred years
old named Sam Lowell, telling everybody he ran into about making sure that they
did a good job on the “skinny.”)
The whole film hinges on
Hawkeye, played by versatile Daniel Day-Lewis, a white guy adopted by the last
of the Mohicans, or who would become the last after his biological son was
killed in a confrontation with another tribe, a tribal warrior, and Hawkeye’s abilities
to keep a couple of daughters of the British commander at Fort William Henry
alive during a year, 1757, of the big showdown between the French and English
over who would control the continent. As we know it was touch and go between the
two enemies, no quarter given. No quarter given especially by the French who
outnumbered in the area of conflict upstate New York made alliances with some
of the tribes in the area. Of course in the film there are the good Indians,
the Mohicans even if destined to wither away, aiding the British and bad Indians,
headed by ruthless savage Huron warrior prince Magua, a real bastard who I
would not want to run into in a dark alley or out in the wilderness either.
Leslie Dumont who knows
some stuff told me that I should play this film up on the big romance between
frontiersman Hawkeye and the older daughter, Cora, played by what Leslie called
fetching Madeleine Stow, who despite about seven battles, a couple of massacres
and plenty of blood wind up giving each other meaningful glances no matter what
the situation (much to the chagrin of her main British officer suitor who will
go to his death on the fire rack cursing her name-in French). I suppose you could
see the film that way, a frontier, when the frontier was upstate New York not the
West of later times, romance in the well-worn, according to Leslie, Hollywood
trope of running a “boy meets girl” angle wherever possible to draw on the
sympathies of the majority female audiences for such films while the blood is
being spilled all around by ghastly tomahawks, knives, spears, guns, cannons
and every other munition of war.
But to me what makes the
film interesting is that thing that Greg warned me away from, the struggle for
control of the continent up close and personal between the commander of the
garrison, Colonel Munro, Cora’s father and French General Montcalm who would
get his comeuppance on the Plains of Abraham up in Quebec and the English would
win the big prize, and the hell with the Indians. I think maybe Frank and Seth,
I don’t know Josh yet but I hear he is a character who has been around a while
too were on to something trying to go with the “stolen land” angle I hope Greg
doesn’t get too ticked off about that and I wind up sucking wind re-writing Sam’s
pieces which they say is the “kiss of death” around here.
