更新时间:2011-07-06

teddy • 黑袍:great movie~great story

The "Black Robe" is a great Canada/Australia movie. The movie is made from a novel, which is written by Brian Moore. The director, Bruce Beresford, also won the Genie Awards as the Best director. The story is about a group of French people try to encourage the local Indians to embrace Christianity. They made a plan of sending young Jesuit Priests to the interior of North America. A young Jesuit named LaForgue and his non-Jesuit assistance were sent to a Huron village. The mission is called "Catholic mission". After a lot struggling and sufferings, LaForgue finally reached his destination.
The whole movie is full of cultural conflicts. French people were rich, civilized, while the local Indians were very original. Those two group of people held two extremely different type of cultures, which makes it very difficult for them to live and work together. We can see the French and Indians were regarding "the other" in many aspect. For instance, the French called the Indians "wild woods people", while the Indians thought all the things those white people said is meaningless, and they do not admit their religion, too, by calling the young Jesuit " Black Robe" instead of "Father". We can also see the cultural gap from the attitude of the Chomina (the leader of the travel group) towards the fact that his young daughter were falling in love with Daniel, the young assistance of LaForgue. Chomina said to his daughter that Daniel is ugly and can't be provided to her, which shows local Indians do not see those colonist the same as themselves.
The biggest reason, why this movie were regarded as one of the most successful movie of that year, is that this movie shows every characters as real human beings but a non-emotional hero. When two cultures hit each other, many unexplained facts were happening, such as "culture change", "culture loss", "acculturation". In the film, when LaForgue traveled on the river, he "shitted" in the river with his whole buttocks exposed outside, and all the other people were staring and laughing about him. This can be seen as a "culture change", kind of changing the culture style to adjust the environment. The young assistance Daniel is one of the most important role in the whole story. After he was falling in love with Chomina's beautiful daughter, Sandrine Holt, he started doubting his own faith by living for god. Eventually, he dumped LaForgue on a dangerous island and then ran after the travel group. This can be seen as a "culture loss". At the end of the movie, LaForgue got the final destination, a Huron village, he successfully convince those local villagers to believe god and give up wars and killings. This can be seen as an aspect of "acculturation". All of these phenomenon are presented very naturally through the movie.
"Colonization" and "Globalization" are two similar words in many aspect, like the movie shows us. they all contains lots of cultural conflicts and "culture change", "culture loss", "acculturation", but the difference is that Colonization is more like trying to remove a culture with another one. The process is violent, and the purpose is always greedy, while "Globalization" is more like trying to find a balance between two different culture. In that balance, people from both two culture backgrounds will show their respect to each other. Although, they might have different life style and religions, they can still work, study and living together, properly and comfortably.