Black Robe
by Bruce Beresford
List Price:
Our Price: $7.29
You Save: $7.69 (51%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.84 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD details
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Actor: Aden Young, August Schellenberg, Lothaire Bluteau, Sandrine Holt, Tantoo CardinalDirector: Bruce Beresford
Brand: BLUTEAU,LATHAIRE
Producer: Brian Moore
Writer: Brian Moore
Producer: Denis Héroux
Producer: Eric Norlen
Producer: Jake Eberts
Producer: Robert Lantos
Producer: Stéphane Reichel
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-07-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Closed-captioned; Color; Dolby; DVD; Letterboxed; Widescreen; NTSC
DVD Reviews of Black Robe
DVD Review: Finally a Psychological Portrait of Missionaries Among Indians
Summary: 4 Stars
The stark landscape and attendant violence might make this seem real for it's time, but the Indian characters are the same stereotypes we always see coming from Hollywood. It is the portrayal of a missionary that makes this a different film. Nice scenery even in a film which is not well digitized for today's high definition. You will need a warm blanket while watching canoes moving through so much ice and snow. This movie reveals human cruelty in a harsh landscape. It is set among incidents of violence between groups of Huron and Iroquois peoples during the early contact with Europeans. The film's dozens of Native characters are lightly to moderately developed in contrast to the main character a Jesuit missionary. While he is the main character he is portrayed with a cold aloofness which is fitting his personality, historical role and the landscape setting. Directed and framed with a touch of abstraction it is the horror which makes this story human not some warm fuzzies. The Jesuit Black Robe is sent among North Eastern tribes as a human sacrifice by his superiors. This is a self fulfilling prophesy revealed through revelations, past and present of his self loathing and in flashbacks of his mother's prophesy. Black Robe is a psychologically dark film which floats the usual raft of Indian stereotypes to a deeper more graphic contemporary stomach turning level. However murderous or sexually unashamed the Natives seem they are bluntly, satisfyingly human in contrast to the starch collared priest who has forever lived in mental torture but never had a minute of pleasure in his life. Or perhaps he has, we can only guess, when we see him beating Mia Culpa's on his back with tree branches following his voyeuristic sexual incident in the woods. Finally arriving at the abandoned mission where he is assigned he immediately gathers an Indian following by telling one less lie than his recently deceased priestly predecessor. Truth being such a rare thing to them we know Indians flock to any white man who shows the slightest improvement regarding the forked tongue issue and he instantly sets about baptizing them all. Should we mention he is greatly helped in this conversion by children who are dying enmasse from fever. The strength of this film lies in looking more deeply into the mind of a Jesuit missionary and his culture at the time of contact. Recent American history scholars might suggest these fellows were misguided but well intended messengers who brought disease, intertribal warfare and sexual perversion to a people that probably had few struggles in these areas- but after all the Indian probably did deserved it for his violent nature, brought about by ignorance and weakness. Black Robe is not a departure from that formula. Since Hollywood has shifted little in the Indian/White Man Western genera than to add a more sympathetic eye to the Indian side of things, it is interesting to see a film which centers on the missionary mind.
Description of Black Robe
A young Jesuit priest travels to the Canadian wilderness during the 17th century, to minister to the Huron Indians.Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 9-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVD
Forget about Kevin Costner's sun-kissed, water-colored, Oscar-winning Dances with Wolves. Black Robe, which was directed by Bruce Beresford, a director who gave the world the finest film of the early '80s Australian new wave, Breaker Morant, and who continually collides cultures and ethnicity in his films (Mister Johnson, Driving Miss Daisy), matches and surpasses the Costner epic as an expertly crafted, brutal saga of redemption and salvation. In 1634 a young French Jesuit missionary is assigned to trek 1,500 miles through the New France wilderness to a mission settled in Huron Indian country. Black Robe chronicles the journey of Father Laforgue (Lothaire Blutheau) as he leaves his Jesuit brothers and, with the aid of a young translator and guide, Daniel (Aden Young), and eight canoes of Algonquin Indians, moves into the uncompromising Canadian northern territory on a die-hard mission to convert the natives. Mixing elements of Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans and Roland Joffé's The Mission, Beresford offers a restless tale of Laforgue's conflicted faith juxtaposed against the sublime spiritual harmony with the land that the Huron and Algonquin already hold. Black Robe dances to its own drummer and is tuned into the precarious balance between nature's mystery and spirit and the strident, unyielding religious ethic. The cinematography by Peter James is relentlessly cruel and bleak, but it absolutely conveys the obstacles that face the idealistic and blind young priest, who by the end, has faced his own awakening. The film also features one of the late, great composer Georges Delerue's most noble scores. --Paula Nechak
Bestsellers in DVD
![The Story of Jeremiah [VHS] Image](/images/noimg.gif)
The Story of Jeremiah [VHS]Vision Video; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Wresting With God [VHS]by Vision Video
Vision Video; Published: 1990-10-01; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
Study Bible Video with Workbook [VHS]Spring Arbor Distributors; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $7.95
Price in other shops:
Tempo:Childrens TV Favourites Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $9.17
Price in other shops:
Tempo.Herbs:Parseley'Sb/ Party Video [VHS]HarperCollins Audio; VHS Tape; VHS Video
![Strike the Original Match [VHS] Image](/images/Strike-the-Original-Match-VHS-0001374079-X.jpg)
Strike the Original Match [VHS]New Liberty Films; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Price in other shops:
![Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS] Image](/images/Medjugorje-The-Miracles-and-the-Message-VHS-0001373293-X.jpg)
Medjugorje The Miracles and the Message [VHS]JPN Film Production; Release date: 1995-12-15; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Best price: $29.99
Mayo Clinic Echocardiography Review Course for Boards and Recertification DVD 2008by Mayo
DVD
Price in other shops:
Pediatric Diagnostic Imaging DVD: Single Userby Oakstone
DVD
Price in other shops:
Cost Accounting [VHS]by Charles T. Horngren, George Foster, Srikant M. Datar, Howard Teall
Pearson Canada, Toronto; VHS Tape; VHS Video
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat)Sony; Release date: 2003-01-24; DVD
Best price: $59.37
![1492: Conquest of Paradise aka A Conquista do Paraiso [Import] Image](/images/1492-Conquest-of-Paradise-aka-A-Conquista-do-Paraiso-Import-B000J0UD94-X.jpg)
1492: Conquest of Paradise aka A Conquista do Paraiso [Import]Published: 1992; DVD
Best price: $19.87
Price in other shops:
Incident at Oglala - The Leonard Peltier StoryLions Gate; Release date: 2004-04-20; DVD
Best price: $4.32
Price in other shops:
ThunderheartSONY PICTURES HOME ENT; Release date: 2003-04-24; DVD
Best price: $4.40
Price in other shops:
The OutsiderShowtime Entertainment; Release date: 2003-11-18; DVD
Best price: $8.70
Price in other shops:
Black Robe: A Novelby Brian Moore
Plume; Published: 1997-06-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.95
Price in other shops:
The Snow WalkerFirst Look Pictures; Release date: 2005-05-31; DVD
Best price: $5.24
Price in other shops:
The New World: The Extended CutNEW Line Home Video; Release date: 2008-10-14; DVD
Best price: $3.61
Price in other shops:
Aguirre, the Wrath of GodFox; Release date: 2000-10-24; Published: 2000-10-01; DVD
Best price: $7.99
Price in other shops:
The Mission (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2003-05-13; DVD
Best price: $9.47
Price in other shops: