Movie review : Black Robe
May 4, 2008 by bloginmyeye
Since I had such a suprisingly good movie-watching experience with End of the Spear, I decided ‘missionary movies’ (of course!) must be the way to go. I picked up another movie I’d heard about but never quite gotten around to seeing…Black Robe. Set in 1634, Black Robe tells the story of Jesuit priest, Father Laforgue, who travels up the St. Lawrence River guided by a group of Algonquin Indians in order to reestablish contact with a Jesuit mission to the Huron Indians.
This movie was released in 1991 and was quite a foil to End of the Spear. Where I felt that End of the Spear was able to realistically portray the good that came from horrific circumstances, Black Robe highlights the more base and dark elements of its story. Whereas the missionaries in End of the Spear are portrayed as good-hearted, fun-loving, family men, Father Laforge is portrayed as a joyless, dour, ascetic yet ultimately sympathetic oddball. We get some glimpse into the redemption that occurs in the lives of the missionary families and the native peoples in End of the Spear. But at the end of Black Robe, long-suffering, benevolent Father Laforge finally gets to baptize the Hurons, who are suffering from scarlet fever; however, the epilogue that immediately follows tells of the end of the Huron nation and their defeat by the Iroquois, the film’s more notorious ‘bad guys.’
I’m left wondering how much of the difference in the perspective of these two ‘missionary flicks’ is due to how the events were processed by those who recounted them as much as in the vast differences in their original settings.
I’m left with lots to consider, yet still a little disappointed.
I saw it years ago and was very disappointed I remember. It was a sad sortof somber movie.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” Things can’t be all happy, happy all the time on this earth. And of course, Father Laforge can’t be a fun-loving family man since he’s a Jesuit priest! And, the story is somewhat tragic. I’m kind of getting on my own nerves here, but…still mulling…
[...] and we are ALL sinners. And somewhere in all of this muck is probably part of the tension between those two missionary flicks that’s been bothering me. (Now, did you see the Martin Luther movie? I loved how he was [...]
I think I was a little more sympathetic to this movie than you were (although you are still mulling). It is, I think, about zeal, both the good and the bad. LaForge is blind to these people for most of the movie, in spite of their constant reminding him that he doesn’t get it. The chief is the only one who really understands anybody (note: he doesn’t ultimately consider even the Iroquios , his enemy, who killed his son in front of him, unlike himself). He also predicts that turning to the Jesuit’s beliefs would be suicide, and it was.
Still, the beauty is that LaForge really does come to love these people, all of them, in spite of his lack of understanding, and even the suffering caused by his association with them (and visa-versa).
Mo, I almost included how much you liked it, but I didn’t want to put words in your mouth. And, granted, your favorite movie is Harold & Maude. (not that there’s anything wrong with that!)
If you like older movies, you’d enjoy The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. It was made in the 50’s with Ingrid Bergman. She portrays Gladys Aylward, missionary to China. It’s really good!