'I thought British policy is 'Make the world England', sir'
Last of the Mohicans 7.8
1756, a group of natives agree to help the British fight the French under express understanding they can return home if they need to defend themselves from the French. Hawkeye (Day Lewis) and his adopted Mohican family are escorting two daughters of a British captain but of course the British, convinced of their own superiority, welch on the deal when the French attack. I hadn't seen this for years so could just remember the gist and a few moments, happily it was on my rewatch list as I wasn't totally taken with it in the past.
Colonisation is always an interesting theme for films (as in Last Samurai) in this i think alot of it comes down to 'nobility' vs 'savages'. With this kind of storyline, the military invariably underestimate the natives. A side plot here is a native warrior from the Mohawk tribe (a very good performance from Wes Studi, who was also in Heat) who is targeting the English captain to get revenge for previous.. he aggressively plays the 2 sides against eachother to get where he needs to and eventually meets the main story when he finds conflict with the Mohicans. I thought it was interesting at the end how the tribes come to an agreement between them and what they agree to.. it blurs the lines of exactly what savage means and which of the sides, if any, is better. The film ends with 3 people from different worlds standing together, which is kind of exactly the opposite of the ethos of the British and French forces.
There are interesting comparisons made between the 2 sides, one of the main ones is the treatment of women. The English want to look after them like children 'the women are tired', tribes look at them more as equals but also like a commodity for children, one of the reasons we would always side with the tribe. So when the older daughtet meets Hawkeye she is taken with the freedom and independence he treats her with. This love story aspect, where 2 people from different worlds find something in eachother, maybe even against their own will (usually with an existing marriage offer to the woman which is the boring, sensible choice that has no excitement) is the best bit of this story for me and has been done many times before of course, it is elemental and has been done for as long as films have been around and. There is a great classic from 1930s, It Happened One Night, which does it as well as anything since. From this to countless Disneys to Croc Dundee, and in another Day Lewis film Age of Innocence. I like in this how they become involved without speaking too much, a few times they are shown just looking at eachother, and that's all we need to see.
My issue with the film is the first half, with all the politics. It has it's moments but i found it much less engrossing than the second half-which is very tonally different and where all the emotion comes out and where the film works best. Some of the story at the beginning had lost me honestly, maybe too much detail with the at the start so it all seems less important.. in terms of whose on what side and whose going where etc. A bit of simplification and more clarity would have helped overall for me. The story really comes alive in the second half after the two have fallen for eachother, now there's more at stake for our main man. The second ambush scene, just over hour in, is a highlight. It looks great and is done very well and works all the better because Hawkeye needs to protect his girl, who proves herself to have guts also. I loved the ending scene on the cliff side. These combat scenes, and the cross country journey aspects of the story reminded me of many classic western plot ie. Cowboys vs Indians.
This was directed by Michael Mann who also made Heat. He's made a few good films, almost all are about men of action or under real pressure (The Insider, Manhunter, Ali, Collateral) Mohicans is no exception, there is lots of well done action and fighting, the first thing we see is them hunting in the forest, which incidentally is exactly like the awesome Apocalypto.. which i wish I could recommend but subtitles makes it a no-go. Everything seems pretty authentic, lots of drums and panpipes in the music, nothing modern. The Soundtrack in very good in places, drum music in the opening credits suggesting tension and danger. Throughout we see alot of natural light and convincing sets. The cinematography is very good, especially during the combat and following them through the forest.
There are a few great individual shots, about 8 minutes in there is a beautiful shot of a bridge over water which i had to pause and take in, we see the reflection like a mirror image, this looked like something straight out of Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, or one of the modern Chinese films like Crouching Tiger. Others where cannons are fired at night which we see from afar. Another interesting shot later on, Day Lewis leading them along a fast flowing river, it is framed to look like they could be walking in the water against the fast current, as if on an exhausting journey and struggling against the flow. You can not stop the water flowing against you but you may still personally overcome it.. a metaphor for the war perhaps.
Day Lewis does a great job of course, often his facial expressions explain his position, although for me his tip top stuff came in his career a few years after this. In his usual way he committed totally to the role, spending time living and sleeping in this environment, eating only what he could catch. It was also great to see Pete Postlethwaite again, even just for a couple of moments.
Overall I still find it sightly less memorable/special than I think it should be. A bit like The Departed, it is easily a very good film with a good story and most of the bits add up but because of the shame of the slow start it just doesn't really get me 100% personally.
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