A Very Bare Look At The Native American (Indigenous People, If You Prefer) Experience In America-The Film Adaptation Of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last Of The Mohicans: A Narrative Of 1757 ” (1992)

DVD Review

By Alex Radley

The Last of the Mohicans, starring Daniel Day-Lewis,  Madeleine Stowe, based loosely on the novel by James Fenimore Cooper, 1826 and an earlier film adaptation in 1936, 1992

I am grateful to Greg Green the site manager at this publication for giving me, a stringer, a chance to break into the film review department which these days according to him drives a lot of what goes on here. Greg approached me about doing a review of the film adaptation of James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last Of The Mohican since I was the only one he contacted that had not read the book and he did not want the political types around here like Frank Jackman, Seth Garth and Josh Breslin to get their hands on the thing and go on and on about the screwing of the Native Americans, the indigenous peoples who populated this continent way before the Spanish, English, French and who knows maybe the Russians staked claims to land not their own. To speak nothing of the later decimation once those bloody English colonists got their independence and went after those peoples hammer and tong. Didn’t want (and he told me to make sure I go this into the review) to hear about the destruction of the land, the trail of tears and the contemporary situation with the plight of the indigenous population although he was painfully aware since his ex-wife was part Lakota Sioux (the guys who gave General Custer all he could handle and more at Little Big Horn) that some terrible injustices have been done to those peoples. Also Greg did not want to hear (although he did not ask me to make a point of saying this so I am doing this on my own hook) about how James Fennimore Cooper knew nothing about Native Americans in upstate New York, except  maybe what he heard around the taverns that he reportedly frequented where he got whatever he knew about anything and used that to run the rack on a bunch of woodland gothic romance novels which would have embarrassed any Harlequin Publications romance novelist.

Since I qualified on all counts I got the nod, got the nod too when after viewing the film I mentioned to Greg (and to Sandy Salmon who I assume told Greg that I had not read the book because I don’t recall telling anybody else here that information when the question came up around the water cooler one morning) that I liked the film very much even if there was more gore and off-hand violence than necessary. He asked me to skip that observation but when I said it would be hard to write the review without mentioning that violence he said put it here before I got to give the reader the skinny and forget about it later. (I admit I am a rookie but I never heard the word “skinny” as a way to say tell the story before I landed here and I kept hearing an old guy, a bent over old guy who looked about one hundred years old named Sam Lowell, telling everybody he ran into about making sure that they did a good job on the “skinny.”)    

   

The whole film hinges on Hawkeye, played by versatile Daniel Day-Lewis, a white guy adopted by the last of the Mohicans, or who would become the last after his biological son was killed in a confrontation with another tribe, a tribal warrior, and Hawkeye’s abilities to keep a couple of daughters of the British commander at Fort William Henry alive during a year, 1757, of the big showdown between the French and English over who would control the continent. As we know it was touch and go between the two enemies, no quarter given. No quarter given especially by the French who outnumbered in the area of conflict upstate New York made alliances with some of the tribes in the area. Of course in the film there are the good Indians, the Mohicans even if destined to wither away, aiding the British and bad Indians, headed by ruthless savage Huron warrior prince Magua, a real bastard who I would not want to run into in a dark alley or out in the wilderness either.  

Leslie Dumont who knows some stuff told me that I should play this film up on the big romance between frontiersman Hawkeye and the older daughter, Cora, played by what Leslie called fetching Madeleine Stow, who despite about seven battles, a couple of massacres and plenty of blood wind up giving each other meaningful glances no matter what the situation (much to the chagrin of her main British officer suitor who will go to his death on the fire rack cursing her name-in French). I suppose you could see the film that way, a frontier, when the frontier was upstate New York not the West of later times, romance in the well-worn, according to Leslie, Hollywood trope of running a “boy meets girl” angle wherever possible to draw on the sympathies of the majority female audiences for such films while the blood is being spilled all around by ghastly tomahawks, knives, spears, guns, cannons and every other munition of war.

But to me what makes the film interesting is that thing that Greg warned me away from, the struggle for control of the continent up close and personal between the commander of the garrison, Colonel Munro, Cora’s father and French General Montcalm who would get his comeuppance on the Plains of Abraham up in Quebec and the English would win the big prize, and the hell with the Indians. I think maybe Frank and Seth, I don’t know Josh yet but I hear he is a character who has been around a while too were on to something trying to go with the “stolen land” angle I hope Greg doesn’t get too ticked off about that and I wind up sucking wind re-writing Sam’s pieces which they say is the “kiss of death” around here.