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| Black Robe | 
 enlarge | Director: Bruce Beresford
Actors: Lothaire Bluteau, Aden Young, Sandrine Holt, August Schellenberg, Tantoo Cardinal
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $5.21
You Save: $9.77 (65%)
New (21) Used (10) from $5.21
Avg. Customer Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 10915
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 101
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.2 x 0.6
MPN: D1002204D
ISBN: 0792850246
UPC: 027616864352
EAN: 9780792850243
ASIN: B00005BKZS
Theatrical Release Date: October 4, 1991
Release Date: July 10, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: ******BRAND NEW****** Cover May Differ** Over 1.5 million orders shipped worldwide and more than 500 000 items in stock, BUY FROM A TRUSTED SOURCE, ESTABLISHED SINCE 1998 - INETVIDEO ~~~
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| Customer Reviews:
 Stunning & Heartbreaking January 16, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This visually stunning and ultimately heartbreaking film by Bruce Beresford became something of a rental cult classic after it disappeared from theaters. Based on Brian Moore's fine novel of the same name (which I also read), the film's central character is young Father Laforgue, an idealistic French Jesuit priest who is determined to bring the light of salvation to the savages, i.e., the Algonquin, Mohawk, and Huron nations who inhabit "New France" in the Canadian frontier in the mid-17th century. The title of the film refers to the name the Indians have given to the French priests because of their long black habits.
Fr. Laforgue is given a mission at the start of the film: to travel 1,500 miles north by river to the Jesuit mission in Huron territory, to assist the aging priest who can no longer function on his own there. Fr. Laforgue's long journey by canoe, guided by a band of Algonquin who have agreed to take him to Huron country for a heap of trade goods, is doubly perilous as it begins just as winter is setting in. The journey north comprises most of the film, and for all concerned becomes one of evolution of the mind and soul as well as bodily hardship, as Fr. Laforgue and his Algonquin companions get to know each other and begin to question the assumptions that each has made of the other's culture.
The cinematography is breathtaking, and as the film was shot on location in Canada during mid-winter, the actors involved have referred to this shoot as one of the most painful and difficult in their experience. The cast is wonderful, with special mention to Lothaire Bluteau as Fr. Laforgue and August Schellenberg as Chomina, the Algonquin chief. Composer Georges Delrue produced a beautiful score for the film, which enhances but never intrudes upon it (Delrue also did the striking score for "Anne of a Thousand Days"). The rest of the cast is also exceptional, with Aden Young giving a nicely restrained performance of the young Frenchman who accompanies Fr. Laforgue, but during the journey slowly goes "native under the skin", as it is sometimes put.
The film is sad and at times quite disturbing, exploring the cruelty, both unintended and deliberate, that humans inflict upon each other in the name of cultural bonding and beliefs. The condescension of white Europeans toward Native cultures is not spared, but neither is the ritual cruelty inflicted by Indians of different tribal affiliations on each other. Fr. Laforgue and his companions are ambushed and captured by a band of Mohawks on the way northward and are tortured and humiliated by them, barely escaping via the seduction of the Mohawk guard by Chomina's beautiful young daughter. In fact, there was some outcry in the Native community when the film came out because the Mohawks are shown only as brutal torturers without any other social context. However, as Chomina grimly points out to Fr. Laforgue, when he protests that these Mohawks are nothing like Chomina and his family, "We would have done the same thing." More than anything else, "Black Robe" is an indictment of assumptions of cultural and spiritual superiority - a trait shared in the film by both the Natives and the Europeans.
The film's ending presages the catastrophe for Native peoples that European emigration to and conquest of North America will bring about in another 150 years. However, on an individual note, it is a tender and evolved ending. By the end of his journey, Fr. Laforgue questions whether acceptance of baptism without understanding its meaning represents a true salvation. When a man among the crowd of Hurons asks Fr. Laforgue if he loves them, Fr. Laforgue looks out at them and sees not a group of savage souls to add to the Christian heaven, but indivdual human beings. "Yes," he whispers, his eyes filling with tears, "I love you."
This is a very affecting film and a far superior entry into the European/Native "culture clash" genre than films such as Kevin Costner's "Dances With Wolves" and Michael Mann's "Last of the Mohicans". I don't say that these films did not work on their own terms or that they did not at least try to repair decades of the film industry's insensitive portrayals of indigenous peoples, but those films were made and intended for the action/adventure market and show it.
"Black Robe" is a vastly more complex and adult - and less comfortable - exploration of the "culture clash" theme, and its emotional impact lingers in the mind and heart long after the credits fade.
Oustanding feature! October 24, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is the most realistic depiction of Native Americans I have seen in the wide screen. The movie sets in the year 1634, roughly 20 years after the founding of Quebec and 14 years after the landing of the Mayflower. Samuel de Champlain is still the governor of the precariously held French settlement.
Historical background: Champlain had earlier accompanied a party of Huron and/or Abenaki in an incursion south, along the shores of the lake he named after himself. They came across a party of Iroquois near today's Ticonderoga and, in the ensuing battle, Champlain shot the leader of the Iroquois party, thus deciding the encounter. The Iroquois never forgot and from that moment on they became rivals of both the French and the northern Indians.
The movie: It is in that context that the Jesuits decide to send another priest to the Huron Mission, upstream the Saint Lawrence, along the shores of Lac Frontenac (now lake Ontario).
The savage beauty of the landscapes is breathtaking. The cruelty of the Canadian winter is powerfully conveyed in all its splendor. The movie makes a very successful effort to portray the Native Americans as they were: bound by their own set of rules, fears, and beliefs, totally alien to Europeans but not so to the young French-Canadian. The end of the movie (which I will not describe here) was a direct consequence of M. Champlain shot at Ticonderoga.
This is a film that touches the soul.
 I had no choice, I had to give this film one star, but it seriously deserves NON.!!!!!!!! October 5, 2007
0 out of 33 found this review helpful
This is probably the worst film I EVER SAW. I always try to see the best in every film, BUT THIS...
The film don't have any plot, just a confused priest walking around in indian country, and if that's not enough there's also a indian dwarf stumbling around. The whole vhs is silly, stupid action scences, bad actors and all in all non wachable. I really wonder why on the front of the vhs it is said"packs twice the punch of dances with wolves". That's maybe the stupiest thing i EVER have heard. Twice the punch my ***.
If you like indian kinds of films you should go for something like Geronimo, The Last Of The Mohicans, Dances With Wolves, Apocalypto, Into The West, The Missing etc.etc Just don't go buying this dvd/vhs, Its not worth a penny.
Historically Accurate August 24, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I first saw this film, coincidentally, shortly after having read Francis Parkman's "Pioneers of France in the New World" and "The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century", the classic histories of that period. I was impressed throughout the movie by the care its makers took to portray things as they really were. There is no agenda of any sort other than to present an accurate, fascinating, and truly artistic version of historical events.
 Excellent filmmaking;distorted facts;BLACK ROBE is a dull film August 17, 2007
7 out of 12 found this review helpful
Having watched this film several times over the years, I am still forced to come to the conclusion that as beautifully filmed and musically scored BLACK ROBE is,it still is not the absorbing film that perhaps it could have been. Long treks up and down rivers and over mountainous terrain and dense forest with little dialogue is not compelling enough for me to rate this film higher than 2 stars. Historically, it is not accurate in regards to the tribal customs of the Iroquois people.
Lothaire Bluteau as "Black Robe" is a far more effective actor when left to speak French in his other film credits. He seems unsettled and unemotional in his English speaking roles.Bluteau is far more effective in JESUS de MONTREAL.
I enjoy historical drama and actually prefer a well developed story that might move slowly; but BLACK ROBE still fails to inspire me in any way, other than looking at the mountains of Canada to Georges Delerue's music!
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