by Brendan Foley
Two Cents
Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
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Few filmmakers defined a decade as completely as Michael Mann set the tempo for the 80’s. With features like Thief and Manhunter and his work as a producer on Miami Vice, Mann crafted a look and feel that still to this day is instantaneously identifiable with the decade of excess.
Some filmmakers cling to their glory days and repeat themselves until everyone is just sort of embarrassed, like a 40 year old wearing their Varsity jacket still. But Mann entered the 90’s with guns blazing, crafting a sprawling historical epic as far removed from the glitz of coke-fueled Miami as possible.
The Last of the Mohicans finds frontiersman Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis, and yes, before you ask, he went nuts getting ready for the role, of course) and his Native American adopted father Chingachgook (Russell Means) and brother Uncas (Eric Schweig) coming to the rescue of Cora (Madeline Stowe) and Alice (Jodhi May) Munro after their party is ambushed.
Trekking through the wilds of New York during the French-Indian War, the party is doggedly pursued by Magua (Wes Studi), a hunter with more on his mind than just standard bloodshed.
Last of the Mohicans drew rave reviews and strong box office when it opened in 1992, but the film tends to be disregarded when contemporary writers discuss Mann’s career, or the historical epics of the 90’s (weird subgenre to get popular). Some of our favorite guests have been yammering about the film for awhile, so we decided to give it a look.
Did you get a chance to watch along with us this week? Want to recommend a great (or not so great) film for the whole gang to cover? Comment below or post on our Facebook or hit us up on Twitter!
Next Week’s Pick:
Key to The Reluctant Fundamentalist‘s story is its perspective. Based on a novel written by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid and directed for the screen by Indian woman, Mira Nair, this political thriller looks at the treatment of foreigners in post-911 America. The movie bombed, perhaps reinforcing its theme that America isn’t that interested in brown people who don’t look like “us”. Or who knows, maybe it just wasn’t that great. But the trailer looks pretty interesting, so we’re going to give it a shot! Catch it streaming on Netflix.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review to twocents(at)cinapse.co!
Our Guests
Jordan Gass-Poore:Everything I know about the French and Indian War I learned from “The Last of the Mohicans.” My high school history teacher decided it was easier for him to press play and go out into the hallway with his flask than to actually teach us anything. When it came time for the exam, Daniel Day-Lewis’s bare chest was the only thing I could remember about the movie, not the fact that the French and Indian War was not actually fought by the French and Indians. Oh, and Day-Lewis’ long, flowing hair is magical. But it couldn’t quite put me under the movie’s spell. The movie, although it’s visually engaging, seems trite by today’s standards. It also has the propensity for the melodramatic (cue the Irish-sounding music)… more than two hours worth. Many reviews I’ve read call the frontier fable “gripping,” and it’s been listed as one of the best action and war movies of all time. This is hard for me to buy because the movie goes from a historically accurate account of war to a laughable love story. (@jgasspoore)
Brendan Agnew: I love this film. I love its lean pacing, its beauty and brutality, and that the almost distantly technical craftsman Michael Mann crafted easily his most beautiful and emotional film about men who lose their world just as the dawn is about to break on the United States of America.
The Last of the Mohicans is a romantic adventure that could reductively be called a fantasy worthy of a Harlequin cover, the story of a “strong independent woman” who just barely needs a man from time to time — provided he’s a ruggedly handsome alpha male who will cross continents for his love. Where the film excels (aside from his gorgeous cinematography and haunting score) is in finding the people behind these mythic stock characters. Hawkeye can dual-wield flintlock rifles, but Daniel Day-Lewis creates a real, aching, funny, compassionate person. Madeline Stowe’s Cora Munro really does have a steely strength and sense of clever agency. But it’s perhaps Wes Studi’s all-time villain turn that emerges as the most hauntingly three-dimensional.
Magua is a monster who will cut out a man’s still-beating heart. And he is our creation. The film’s heroes throw their lot in with the murdering imperialists who made Magua what he is and — for all their own nobility — are damned for it. That this is part of the film at all is impressive, but that it doesn’t stop the film from being slightly hopeful is astounding. (@BLCAgnew)
The Team
Justin: As a kid, my best friend’s father, whom I called “Uncle David” loved epic movies. This one, Dances With Wolves, and Braveheart stand out in my memory as ones he watched over and over. At the time, the only thing they were good for to me was as a sleep aid.
Fast forward a few decades and this bores me as much as ever. In fact, virtually any film that can be described as “epic”, minus a few small exceptions, can be counted amongst the films I’d least like to rewatch.
I will, however, note my favorite moment… it was when the closing credits rolled. I’ll now pack this film back into the box labeled, “Maybe Try Again in 20 Years, But Probably Not” or the one marked “TRASH”.
zzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzZZZ… (@thepaintedman)
Brendan:Lush visuals belie a bleak heart as Michael Mann uses pulp to encapsulate the festering anger and rot in the American colonies that will soon lead to full-blown revolution. Last of the Mohicans is a story about endings, about the way mistakes and miscommunications ripple through the years to become contemporary tragedy. That tragedy is given physical shape in Magua, an incredible villain. Magua is an awful, contemptible creature, and yet he is justified in every heinous action, every act of brutality. He is a man who has been pushed and pushed and pushed, and for as fearsome as we find him, he cannot be blamed for having been pushed too far.
Mann plays a dirty trick on the audience, aligning our sympathies with the crowd that we know to be history’s assholes. We know the British are in the wrong, we know that the great tide of history is coming to dash this cursed empire on the rocks. But Mann zeroes in on the people caught on the wave, on people who cannot know the gran picture and are simply trying to get through the day, unaware of the bigger world turning. For all the beauty in the frame, it’s a melancholy heart that throbs in this adventure picture. (@TheTrueBrendanF)
Austin:There’s a surprising amount of undignified smack-talking this week, but don’t listen to the naysayers. The Last Of The Mohicans is thrilling, vibrant, and crucial cinema. Michael Mann takes James Fenimore Cooper’s great American novel and infuses it with epic grandeur.
The film boasts wonderfully realized characters and astounding visual beauty, but the cliffside finale offers the most obvious example of what I believe to be the most important component: the stirring theme by Dougie MacLean, combined with the majestic score by Randy Edelman and Trevor Jones, mixes adventure and melancholy for one of the most resplendent and emotionally resonant film music landscapes of all time. (@VforVashaw)
Did you all get a chance to watch along with us? Share your thoughts with us here in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook!