最后的莫希干人

最后一个莫希干人是很多人颇为称道的名片了。可我总是先看过美国商业大片，在当期大片的DVDrip看完之后我才开始欣赏我的一些典藏。

最后一个莫西干人，就是如此。

所谓剧情，简介什么的我也无须再说，网上大把，背景故事也不用再提，非常喜欢的人可以直接买书来看。当当什么的都有。

我说说自己喜欢的地方，最后一个莫西干人在片中其实是千家谷，他在片尾那些话说的很有深意。白人会来到印第安人的这片土地，当一个个本地民族消失，同化，殖民这个概念其实也不复存在，这是历史发展的必然，你可以预见，但不可抗拒。

说起来最感动的场面，我看是英国军官德勒代替豪克依来顶替英国守军将领门罗的女儿歌娜要被烧死的那一幕，德勒之前是心仪于门罗的大女儿歌娜的，可是歌娜爱上了土著豪克依，在歌娜被另外的土著休伦族抓住要活活烧死的时候，豪克依去说情并想让休伦族的长老同意烧死自己换取歌娜的性命。做为豪克依的翻译的德勒，在这个时候本来是可以顺理成章的看到自己的情敌被烧死，自己就更有机会和生还的歌娜一起，但他翻译时故意说成了是自己要去代替被烧死......选择自己被活活烧死，祝福爱人和自己的情敌，这本是一个人不可能会做出来的选择，可是他这样做了。好伟大，真的好伟大。

另外一个情节也是感人至深，门罗的小女儿爱丽丝被豪克依的哥哥雍加爱慕，但她被休伦族的激进者马瓜胁迫，雍加去救爱丽丝却被马瓜杀死并从悬崖坠下，这时惊人的，在剧中一直羸弱的爱丽丝见此情景，居然自己毅然的跳入崖下。那份弱女子的勇敢和坚定让人敬佩不以。

你可以说这是一部战争片，在我心里，它也讲述了人性，爱，自由。

很好看的电影，推荐。

干瘪的历史，片子开头很快就说完了。
片子的战斗基本都是慢动作，片子我是冲着那些推荐狙击手的电影文章来的，看封面还以为很劲爆，失望至极点。
片子两个女儿很漂亮，还有男主那句“无论多久，无论多远，我都会找到你”，很动人。原来很快就跑去和族长理论去了。
片子没啥节奏，也没啥张弛，没亮点，一杯白开水。不过对英国和法国打仗那些礼仪倒是见识了，真的很绅士！
看豆瓣一面倒的推捧，看来我绝对是二逼青年了，文艺路踩不上腿。

主要看点是马格瓦的战斧猎刀绝技.

马格瓦在小说的铺垫当中显得狡猾残忍,在几场重头戏中却表现得和懦夫无异. 相对小说里的失败人物塑造而言,电影在这方面比小说好得太多.

至于鹰眼和快腿鹿的角色置换,就没什么好说了.

Michael Mann (b. 1943)

Like Bruce Beresford, Michael Mann might claim to be slightly other than the “typical” Hollyoood director, though he is Chicago-born and works a little more comfortably within American genres and conventions. But his apprenticeship includes a B.A. in literature from University of Wisconsin and a film degree from the prestigious London Film School. Returning to the USA in the1970s, he moved smoothly into commercial advertising where, like Ridley (Blade Runner) Scott, he quickly claimed distinction for his remarkable sense of lighting and décor. By the early 1980s he had segued off into television, gaining fame as the executive producer of a popular and long-running investigative crime drama, Miami Vice. The series established the city of Miami as the new site of “film noir” and its impact on the industry is still visible in contemporary shows like Miami CSI and The Glades. Lots of neon, lots of light on water, lots of with-it music.

Frequently, directors who gravitate towards television sink below the horizon and are never heard from again. Mann was spared this fate because his skills-set fit nicely with the popular neo-noir revival of the 1980s and 1990s, to which he contributed Manhunter (1983). LA Takedown (1986) and Heat (1995), and The Insider (1999). In the new millennium Mann would add Miami Vice (2006) and Public Enemies (2009) to his screen credits: the first is a film vaguely evolved from the television series of the 1980s and the second a reprise of the 1930s gangster film, built around the figure of John Dillinger. It has never done any harm to Mann’s career that he is also a capable screenwriter and a competent business manager with a knack for collecting first-class theatrical talent (think, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Russell Crowe, among others). Though his proven achievements would seem to best suit him for films with contemporary, urban settings and accents of the thriller, it didn’t surprise too many people when he was contracted to direct The Last of the Mohicans (1992), the sixth remake of James Fenimore Cooper’s novel of the same name, the favorite narrative of “Leather-Stocking Tales,” which founded the western genre in the 1820s.

As in Black Robe, we have in Last of the Mohicans a narrative of the earlier American west, when the “frontier” began on the northwest outskirts of New York City. We are now slightly more than 100 years downstream from the period of the Jesuit chronicles, but the war we are plunged into is the same world-historical battle between the empires of France and Britain for the control of North America. Now in its final phase, a seven-year encounter which in the USA is called the French/Indian War (1756-63), this protracted battle leaves Britain the master of the continent, but also brings to the world stage a new set of actors who are beginning to call themselves “Americans,” and even remarking, quietly and hesitantly still, that they might prefer not to be servants of the English crown. The tribal tensions remain much the same: the Indians south of Lake Ontario (the Iroquois and the Mohicans) are allied with the English; the Algonquins and the Hurons, both north of the lake, take their marching orders from the French. A little incongruously, the Mohicans are tribal kin of the Algonquins, as indicated by their language, and bear no great love for the Iroquois. But the Iroquois Confederacy, the most powerful Native American political force of New York and New England, pursued a policy of “assimilation,” which forcibly drew members of other tribes into their own, sometimes effectively erasing the tribe’s original identity. Hence the dire threat state to the Mohicans, which gives Cooper the title of his novel.

Fenimore Cooper, of course, is much more invested in these historical events than Michael Mann. The creator of “Leather Stocking” belongs to the first generation of post-revolution Americans: he was born in 1789, virtually at the outset of Washington’s first term as President. And one of the crucial events of Cooper’s teenage years was the journey of Lewis and Clark up the Missouri river to map the land acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. More to the point, perhaps, is that he was growing up during the second war with Britain (1812-14), in which the USA had decisively defeated English forces in the west. A decade later, just three years before the publication of Cooper’s novel, President Monroe sent to Congress a message known as the Monroe Doctrine, which decisively asserts the claims of American nationalism against all the European powers. Cooper writes out of this intensely nationalistic milieu, but is aware of some of its complexity, working very self-consciously with issues of race and ethnicity. What place, if any, do the native peoples have in the new nation? How have they contributed to the creation of a unique American sensibility? How do we gracefully invite them to leave the land to us? As you will see in our small excerpt from the novel, Cooper struggles with these questions, finding them a bit awkward.

Mann is far less interested in American history and operates at a much lower level of political fervor. You might notice, for example, that Nathaniel, the archetypal American, turns out to be the British actor Daniel Day Lewis, who manages somehow to look pretty authentic in the costume of a backwoodsman. Mann handles the Native Americans differently as well, nodding appreciatively towards their value system but excluding them from real relevance. Interestingly, the film was released in the same year that marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus’ first voyage, which caused it to be charged in some circles with “cultural imperialism.” That’s a matter we will almost certainly discuss in class. What also seems reasonably certain is that Mann tries strenuously to reduce the political concerns of the novel and replace them with a love story. But as with other purveyors of western myth, the love story has an added dimension. We are really being invited to fall in love with the American west.