0:12

Is

0:24

as Welcome

0:41

back to Man

0:41

Hunting in which Waypoint and friends

0:43

are working through the filmography of Michael

0:45

Mann and examining his themes of labor

0:48

and craft, capitalist oppression,

0:50

and

1:59

in cinema. So obviously,

2:02

you know, have to have to make sure everyone

2:06

eats at the banquet table of

2:08

Michael Mann. So

2:11

last of no heacons, not

2:14

a favorite book of mine doesn't

2:16

seem like it was a favorite book of any Hollywood

2:18

script, a screenwriter, not a favorite

2:20

book of Michael Mann's, because

2:22

everyone basically takes the broadest outline

2:25

of James Hennemore Cooper's novel and

2:28

seems to throw it into the bin

2:31

and then kind of riff in a different direction.

2:33

The film that Mann actually cites as

2:35

sort of the precursor to the 1992 film is an earlier

2:40

Hollywood adaptation that

2:43

I've never seen it, but according to Mann is a bit stylistically

2:45

clunky, but seems to have a pretty

2:48

smartly adapted script

2:50

that draws some interesting themes out of the

2:52

text. Those themes come

2:54

through in the broad story of

2:57

Last of the Mohicans. So Last of the Mohicans

2:59

takes place in 1757 in the early

3:01

stages of the Seven Years War

3:06

or the French and Indian War as it is known

3:09

in the, at least the United States, Troy, do

3:11

they call it that in Canada

3:13

as well as just something else? Now we call it the

3:15

Seven Years War. Yeah, it makes sense.

3:19

So it takes place during the period

3:22

in the war in the North American

3:25

colonies where France and

3:27

England are sort of vying

3:30

for control of the waterways in

3:33

the northern colonies along the border of

3:36

Canada. And where

3:39

the story sort of opens is

3:41

we're

3:42

opening on

3:45

a couple different groups

3:48

of characters. On the one hand, you have

3:51

Hawkeye, a family of

3:54

hunters and trappers, Hawkeye

3:57

and Unkas, who are the adopters.

4:00

of Sun and son of Chingat-Shuk,

4:03

who is the titular last

4:06

of the Mohicans, at least by the end of the film.

4:09

They are, as the film sort of calls

4:12

out in the opening, they're the last of a pretty

4:15

much vanished American tribe.

4:18

And they are on the very far

4:21

frontier of the colonies and

4:24

continuing to push deeper

4:27

and deeper into the backwoods to both

4:29

get away from the advance of colonial

4:31

control and also to

4:34

continue exploring the opportunities that

4:37

exist further west. In

4:40

Albany, you also have

4:42

the daughters of a Colonel

4:44

Monroe who have arrived in the United States

4:47

to be with their father as

4:49

he is posted to defending the colonies.

4:52

And they are on their way to Fort William Henry

4:55

in the company of a British

4:57

officer who is a family friend and

4:59

who is rather for a lonely

5:02

courting, the eldest daughter, Cora Monroe,

5:05

in an attempt to win her hand

5:08

in marriage. And

5:11

the action that sort of precipitates

5:14

the rest of the film is

5:16

that

5:17

they are

5:19

being escorted by a company of troops, but

5:21

crucially, they're also being guided to

5:23

Fort William Henry, which is a far frontier for

5:25

it, by a

5:28

person they think is a Mohawk

5:30

guide, Magua. Before

5:34

long, Magua leads them into

5:36

an ambush. Pretty

5:39

much all the British troops, except

5:41

for Major Duncan

5:44

Hayward, who is the officer

5:46

accompanying them, gets wiped out. And

5:48

they are rescued by the

5:50

party of hunters. They

5:54

travel together, they go to Fort William Henry,

5:56

which they find under siege by

5:58

the French general, Montgouvelin. and

6:01

they are swept up in fast movie

6:03

events that culminate

6:06

in

6:07

the breach of multiple

6:09

agreements between the colonial

6:11

forces serving with

6:14

the British Colonel Monroe. They're

6:16

also swept up in the breach

6:19

of a truce between Monroe

6:22

and Montgomery as Magua

6:25

leads his forces to try and wipe out the

6:27

English all in an effort to

6:29

kill specifically Colonel Monroe and

6:31

his daughters as payoff for a

6:34

blood vendetta

6:37

between the two men. One that

6:39

Magua remembers very keenly and Monroe

6:43

seems dangerously oblivious too.

6:46

The action sort of climaxes in the

6:48

wake of this ambush as Hawkeye,

6:53

Chingachuk and Unkas and

6:56

the two Monroe girls plus

6:59

Major Hayward are able

7:01

to escape the ambush and are taken

7:03

prisoner. Well,

7:07

the party is separated at that point. The

7:10

English characters are taken

7:12

prisoner by Magua's

7:14

heron warband and

7:16

taken to their village

7:19

and meanwhile Hawkeye, Unkas and Chingachuk

7:22

are pursuing them to mount a rescue. And

7:25

the action of the film kind of climaxes,

7:28

it was the dramatic action maybe climaxes actually

7:30

here where Magua makes his case

7:33

for all that he has done and demands

7:35

to be accepted back among heron

7:37

and also recognized as

7:39

a great leader among

7:41

them.

7:43

Hawkeye arrives in the middle of speech,

7:45

makes a counter argument which is

7:47

that Magua has

7:49

become a monster in

7:52

the course of his revenge and has also

7:55

adopted a lot of the frameworks

7:57

of the colonial powers that he has done.

8:00

opposes. The

8:02

Huron chief attempts to

8:04

sort of divide the child to no one's

8:08

great happiness.

8:10

And

8:12

at that point, he sends the

8:14

youngest Monroe daughter off with

8:16

Magua, who's leaving in a huff, and

8:19

she's being taken as sort of a prize.

8:23

And so we have a final action

8:25

encounter in

8:27

this incredible mountainside showdown,

8:30

where Unkus, to rescue

8:32

the younger Monroe daughter,

8:36

is bested in a fight and killed.

8:39

Young Alice Monroe, rather than continue

8:42

to be Magua's prisoner, throws herself

8:44

from the cliff. And then

8:47

Chinggashuk, played by Russell Means, I

8:49

should mention, and we'll get to why that's relevant,

8:52

maybe

8:53

a bit later, shows up,

8:55

kills Magua, and Hawkeye

8:58

and Coram Monroe, who have fallen in love,

9:01

end the film on a mountaintop with Chinggashuk,

9:04

as he explains that now he is the last

9:06

of his tribe, and hopefully, with

9:09

his death, will be reunited with

9:11

them. And together, the characters sort of look

9:13

forward into, for them, an uncertain

9:16

future, and for us, the audience, the

9:19

knowledge of what we know awaits

9:22

indigenous and colonial

9:24

peoples in what will become the United

9:27

States in years to come. So

9:30

that's the broad outlines. We'll talk about the

9:33

specific moments a bit soon.

9:36

But I think, for me,

9:39

the first thing I want to address

9:42

is that I think for a long time, I basically

9:44

misread this film a lot because, I thought,

9:48

because as a kid, Hawkeye

9:50

just seemed like the coolest, and

9:52

I loved Daniel Day Lewis in

9:54

this role. Hawkeye

9:57

is sort of this, you know... badass

10:01

ranger It almost the

10:03

Aragorn of the frontier in

10:05

some ways in this movie and so

10:07

for a long time I sort of regarded this as a movie

10:10

that is fundamentally about Hawkeye

10:12

and the coin didn't drop until years later

10:15

That I'm not actually sure it's about

10:18

him at all

10:20

and so I'm kind of curious over

10:22

looking at this from the standpoint of Who

10:25

has the most compelling dramatic arc who

10:27

do we think like in terms of the type of Michael

10:30

Mann protagonist we've discussed a date

10:33

like Who who are

10:35

the central figures in this story?

10:38

Well, so it's really funny because you know,

10:41

these are based on a god

10:43

is it a pentology? I

10:45

think

10:45

it's a pentology of novels

10:47

by James Fenimore Cooper, you know written

10:49

in the 1820s and

10:53

Hawkeye's actual name and this is

10:55

important because fuck that guy but also

10:58

his name is nattie bumpo

11:01

BMPPO

11:04

Yeah, so the protagonist daddy bumpo

11:07

skilled frontiersman and he

11:09

he is the he's the protagonist of the novels

11:12

like The Leatherstocking Tales

11:14

Follow daddy bumpo

11:17

But like yeah like here he feels

11:19

more like the movie needed

11:22

Like we needed to have a central figure

11:24

that was like, you know Oh, here's

11:26

a white guy that like white audiences can like, you

11:28

know figure on and we can like, you know Put Daniel

11:31

Day Lewis in it and he's you know, he

11:33

will smooth, you know tickets. So sure we'll go

11:35

with that and

11:36

but yeah, no This

11:39

is not about him at all No,

11:42

it's not but like you said, it's

11:44

definitely trying to frame him that way because

11:46

it seems like it just needs that kind of character

11:50

But you know, I mean this game this movie

11:52

to me and not having seen it Honestly

11:54

in at least two decades since the last time

11:56

I watched it. I

11:58

was struck by how

12:01

deeply historical fantasy this movie

12:03

seems to be, as opposed to something that

12:05

is trying to go for serious

12:08

authenticity or realism. Like it's an adventure

12:10

film that

12:11

is set against sort of the backdrop

12:13

of this real life war and these

12:16

conflicts. But the whole thing has

12:18

the sweep and the kind of,

12:20

you know, the gravitas of like a big

12:23

old dumb adventure movie. I mean,

12:25

yeah, this is a romantic

12:27

film. It's very much so. But

12:30

you know, you talk about the fact that like

12:32

it doesn't necessarily feel like it's about Hawkeye.

12:35

I feel like that is most,

12:37

you don't really get that sense until the end

12:40

when it's the dad that gets the

12:42

big climactic fight that

12:45

he gets up there and he takes down Magua.

12:48

And it's like,

12:49

you know, like Hawkeye's there. He's

12:51

doing his thing, but like in the end, like

12:53

the person who gets to deliver the killing blow

12:55

and sort of like get his revenge

12:58

is his father.

12:59

And so it's sort of like in any other

13:01

movie, you would think that would just be the

13:03

layup, you know, the tee ball hits

13:06

of just give Hawkeye this big moment and there

13:08

you go. That's the big, you know, like

13:11

payoff. But this movie doesn't seem

13:13

particularly invested in having that

13:15

kind of moment despite that framework.

13:18

I mean, I see where we're all coming from, but

13:21

I don't know if I necessarily can go along

13:23

with this. I mean, he doesn't get the big kill shot

13:25

at the end, but throughout the film, he's the guy

13:27

who gives the big speech before

13:29

the Satcham. He

13:31

has a big dramatic in the book, it

13:33

is Ancus who gives that. It isn't

13:35

who testifies

13:38

before the Satcham. It's not Hawkeye.

13:40

It

13:42

is Hawkeye who helps the

13:45

courier escape the fort with his kill

13:47

shot from the fort.

13:50

He is an action hero and you know, Nathaniel Bumpo

13:52

is I guess the first great action hero

13:54

in American literature. I mean,

13:57

he is the Ivanhoe of America.

14:00

and historical fiction. And

14:02

now, I mean, I kind

14:05

of think the hero of the story is

14:08

America, really, in

14:10

some weird sense because of the adaptational

14:12

choices that are made throughout this film.

14:16

I mean, Rob, you mentioned how nobody really

14:18

likes this book and I don't like

14:20

it at all, but we have like

14:22

the whole colonial militia thing that

14:25

is introduced in the plot. The militia

14:28

chafing against British rule. That's

14:31

nowhere in the book.

14:33

It's nowhere in other

14:33

adaptations. That is introduced

14:36

to tell the story of a country coming

14:39

to be with the foreshadowing

14:42

of the curses of

14:44

America on the First Nations people

14:47

in the discussion before the Sachib.

14:51

I think, you know, Tim Gachkuk is, he

14:54

does get the killing blow at the end. Through

14:56

a lot of the film, he's

14:58

kind of a sidekick?

15:01

Yeah, so I think there's that,

15:05

but I think for me, it's

15:07

that,

15:08

Hawkeye is our lens

15:10

through which we understand a lot

15:13

of this film and he is like, he's a critical

15:15

character as is Cora.

15:18

But in terms of like, who

15:21

has the most interesting

15:23

dramatic arc, right? Who is the character

15:25

that like undergoes a major

15:28

change over the course of the story? Where

15:31

do we see, who has been transformed

15:33

by this experience? To a degree, like,

15:36

you know, everyone in that core group to greater or lesser

15:38

extents has been. But

15:40

for me, when I look at the film,

15:44

it

15:44

all seems to be pointing for me toward

15:46

Magua. That

15:49

the more I've seen this film and

15:52

the more I see the way it is constructed

15:54

and what it is building to,

15:56

the thing that it's building to is not any

15:59

of the. like major action set pieces.

16:02

Like when I look at this film, it is building

16:05

toward Magua being rejected by

16:09

the Satcham. That he

16:14

is a character who is almost like,

16:16

it's a bit like if the count of Monte Cristo

16:19

was being told from this perspective of

16:21

absolutely everyone but the count of Monte

16:23

Cristo in some ways. He

16:26

is this character who is on this long-term

16:29

hell-bent revenge mission that

16:32

Bob Hearns is probably pretty righteously

16:35

founded, right? But he

16:37

has dedicated his life to it and

16:39

he has this whole almost like James

16:41

Kahn in Thief actually

16:43

that scene in the diner where he pulls out that

16:46

little

16:46

clip out of like what he imagines

16:49

his life to be when he's got what he wants.

16:52

Magua going to the village chief

16:55

and asking to be like recognized

16:58

as leader among the Huron. That is

17:00

his that is his dream. This

17:03

is like the character who's been pursuing

17:05

a goal and has brought it painfully close to close

17:07

to fruition here more than anyone is

17:10

Magua. He's dedicated his life to it. He has

17:12

become a machine

17:15

sort of precision tooled

17:16

for revenge and

17:19

warfare.

17:20

And in the end that is also

17:22

what causes all of that to be taken

17:25

away from him. And that last fight

17:27

in some ways is just kind of like

17:29

via the language of action and like

17:31

cinematic violence,

17:33

concretizing the conclusions

17:36

that we just saw unfold in that council

17:39

discussion. And so for me that's

17:41

kind of like fundamentally I

17:43

do agree with you Troy that in a lot of ways this movie's

17:46

like really idyllically

17:48

anticipating the arrival of the

17:50

American Revolution in some ways though

17:53

also is wary of it. But

17:55

in terms of like the characters

17:57

I find that seem to check

17:59

all.

17:59

the boxes that I look for in Michael

18:02

Mann films and seem

18:04

to have the most interesting stories

18:07

attached to them, it all

18:09

points toward West Studi's

18:13

frankly unforgettable turn as

18:15

Magua. I think for

18:17

me,

18:18

it's the synthesis of the two of you, right? It's

18:20

because you're right about Magua

18:22

being the Mann protagonist,

18:25

Troy is right in that America

18:27

is the hero of this film. I

18:29

don't know that necessarily, I can't decide

18:32

if Mann is, if that's

18:34

an accident, if because

18:37

of what Magua ends up representing and

18:39

who the hero of this film really is. Like

18:44

what everything about this film, like kind

18:46

of like, you know, foregrounds,

18:49

is Michael

18:53

Mann aware of that, or is that just a consequence

18:56

of, well, if we make Magua

18:59

into James Kahn's characters

19:02

from Thief basically,

19:04

what does that then give us at the end

19:06

of this? I

19:09

do think that Magua is of

19:11

the characters in this movie, the most

19:14

analogous to the kinds of characters

19:17

that Mann has focused on in his films up

19:19

to this point.

19:21

He may be an antagonist, but he's not a villain.

19:24

He's interested in sort of the

19:27

circumstances that brought Magua to this place.

19:30

It never really goes out of its way to condemn

19:33

him outside

19:34

of the scene where basically he doesn't

19:39

get what he wants.

19:41

But even there, it's very much framed

19:43

in this, like, well, yeah, you were brought

19:45

to this place because these people screwed

19:47

you over and over again and ruined

19:49

your life in some very severe ways.

19:52

So like, it is at least trying to be understanding

19:54

of what got him there. The only, like,

19:57

the only real villains in this movie…

19:59

are the British and the

20:02

French at large. Like there is, you

20:04

know, there is not... Obviously there are some very sniveling,

20:06

you know, sort of like

20:08

stubborn military characters here who

20:11

sort of play like the more traditional villain roles,

20:13

but it never seems like it wants to give Magua

20:16

that like heel turn,

20:18

because there's one, West Udi

20:20

seems like he is very resolute in not like

20:22

playing the character that way, but two, it seems like

20:24

it just wants to give more to that character

20:26

than you typically get in these kinds of stories.

20:30

Yeah, if we can talk about some of the things that

20:32

foregrounds up front, I think it has

20:34

a really, this film has a really terrific,

20:38

like first act, but some of the prologue

20:41

stuff it puts down is really effective

20:43

here just in terms of both

20:46

in just the filmmaking, but also

20:49

some of the issues it raises front

20:51

and center. And I think for me, like one of the first scenes

20:54

that really stands out, and by the way, I think

20:56

Troy and I, you and I are talking about this on Twitter, it's

20:59

a mark of how much

21:00

the landscape has shifted

21:03

in terms of like who is currently like

21:05

a notable star right now. I've

21:07

seen this movie, I don't know, probably 10 times.

21:10

This

21:12

is the first time I've seen it and been like, well,

21:16

that British recruiting sergeant looks a lot like Jared Harris.

21:19

And then he keeps talking and I'm like,

21:20

I swear to God, that's Jared Harris. And it is,

21:23

it turns out Jared Harris, who

21:25

was in the years since

21:27

that brand of like British character actor has

21:30

become like the most treasured commodity

21:33

on Prestige TV at least. But

21:36

in his scene, he is situated at

21:38

this

21:39

place, the

21:42

Cameron's farm, which

21:45

is everything of you, if

21:47

you watch the commentary on Last

21:49

of the Mohicans,

21:52

there's kind of two things you're gonna learn. One

21:54

is that man is rightfully and

21:56

enormously proud of.

21:59

the amount of practical

22:02

work they did, building sets, not

22:05

falling back on digital effects. And

22:08

so they actually build Fort William

22:10

Henry on a 40 acre shooting

22:13

lot, not shooting lot, they just build it

22:15

out in the Carolina countryside.

22:19

And so this is one of the major

22:21

sets they build is this sort of frontier

22:24

just carved out of the Backwoods farm

22:28

that is under the Comptroller's

22:30

family,

22:30

the Cameron's. And

22:33

what's sort of depicted here is

22:36

the degree to

22:39

which the frontier at this moment

22:42

is this really porous idea

22:45

where you have on the one

22:47

hand official

22:49

British rule, like technically

22:51

these people are all under the

22:55

governance of the

22:57

crown. And here's Jared

22:59

Harris, the embodiment of that,

23:02

basically trying to dictate to

23:04

the English colonials

23:07

of New York how it's going to be, what

23:09

they owe their crown,

23:12

why it is in their interest, and also

23:14

in their duty to come serve in

23:17

the army to fight the French. But

23:20

also here are a lot of

23:23

native peoples who

23:27

are

23:28

part of this community, but they're not

23:30

part of the crown's

23:33

authority. They are a separate

23:36

people and a separate nation here that

23:40

are adjacent to all these issues but

23:43

are not immediately subject to them. And

23:45

then you have like, you know,

23:47

like honest to God,

23:50

frontiersmen, like

23:53

Hawkeye and his family, who

23:55

like sure technically I guess

23:58

maybe you could call us subjects to a crown,

23:59

But as he puts it in the scene, I don't

24:02

call myself subject to much at all. Which

24:05

is a funny line, but also pretty

24:08

much the articulation

24:10

of this character's worldview. Which

24:13

is that the entire reason I like inhabiting

24:15

this

24:16

bordering space,

24:18

the entire reason I'm continually venturing

24:22

out beyond whatever is the current frontier, is

24:24

that I want to

24:25

live apart from this world. I do

24:27

not want to live under these

24:29

rules and these morals. And

24:32

so that's all coming through in

24:35

the scene where they're

24:37

trying to raise the colonial militia. And

24:39

the colonial militia are very

24:41

much divided in terms

24:44

of whether they even want to go fight this

24:46

war. And certainly, if they

24:48

do,

24:51

what security is going to be given to their families?

24:53

Isn't it dangerous to go leave

24:56

their farms and families unattended to

24:58

go fight in what amounts to a

25:01

European cabinet war?

25:03

Yeah, I mean, its portrayal of the whole French and Indian

25:05

war is not

25:07

necessarily accurate in

25:09

the details, but it's accurate in the sense. Certainly,

25:13

in Virginia and Pennsylvania, you had a lot of issues

25:15

between Central

25:17

Canada, the British authorities, and the militia.

25:20

This is one of George Washington's big complaints when he's

25:23

an officer in the Virginia militia,

25:27

but he has to obey more junior

25:29

officers in the British military because

25:32

they're British and he's a colonial. And it becomes

25:34

this huge issue with him and

25:37

a burned

25:37

saddle for the

25:39

rest of his life, leading

25:42

to great miscalculations by the

25:44

British thereafter. The poorness

25:47

of the borders, I mean,

25:48

by this time, most of the First

25:50

Nations in this conflict

25:53

end up throwing in with the French because the

25:56

French aren't coming over in really large numbers.

25:58

They see the French as a whole. better bet because

26:00

they're not taking over the whole land, whereas they

26:02

see the, except

26:04

for a few nations, the

26:07

Lenape to an extent, the

26:09

Mohicans and some

26:11

of the Iroquois, Haudenosaunee nations,

26:14

throw in with the British. But for the most part,

26:16

the frontier is American

26:21

Indians allying with the French and

26:23

more calm trying to figure out how to deal with them, becomes

26:26

a big issue in the historic seizure of Fort

26:28

William Henry. Can he control

26:31

these these native soldiers and

26:33

the Canadian militia, the French Canadian militia, who

26:35

we also have very little regard for. So

26:38

the entire, the the poorness you mentioned

26:40

and the uncertainty and

26:42

the debates over jurisdiction,

26:45

who does the frontier belong to, what

26:48

are the limits of freedom, this is once again a very

26:50

American story, what does it mean to be free, you

26:53

know Hawkeye becomes the archetype for Daniel

26:56

Boone and Davy Crockett are historical figures

26:58

who take on major political roles, but

27:01

in the popular imagination, you know, they're wild

27:03

frontier Disney characters who

27:07

go out there and hunt and fight

27:09

the savages and do all this other

27:11

stuff, the way the Hawkeye has

27:14

become, he becomes this archetype

27:17

to represent the frontier, the mountain

27:19

man archetype we get in the

27:21

Ohio Valley. So this, I

27:24

think man does a very good job in

27:26

just the opening scenes, even

27:29

the first half hour of showing how uncertain

27:31

and how unclear the future

27:33

of this country is and who these communities

27:36

are and what they what they

27:38

owe to each other, what their obligations are. Hawkeye

27:41

isn't subject to much of anything

27:44

except his own internal compass and his own sense

27:46

of family and his own sense of justice. It

27:48

is an individualism that

27:50

I think has become, you know,

27:53

it's become entrenched in American culture, it's been entrenched

27:55

in a lot of cultures and

27:57

I think he does a very good job of setting that out.

27:59

throughout the film. There's one

28:02

thing though about the individualism, I

28:05

do wanna push back on a little bit, which is

28:07

that I think if there's something that the

28:09

film sort of waxes nostalgic for or

28:11

mournful about, it is the notion

28:13

that

28:15

this

28:16

status quo such as it is that

28:18

exists, there is no status quo, right? It's a constantly

28:21

fluid like boundary line,

28:23

but this

28:25

culture, I'm trying to avoid

28:27

the word liminal because it's overused and it's such a, you

28:30

know what I mean? Like it's a word that's kind of lightly

28:32

poisoned, but we're actually in a liminal

28:34

territory here where

28:37

I think one of the things that like in that

28:39

scene,

28:40

the camera sort of basically turns

28:43

away once Hawkeye's lost interest

28:45

in what the recruiting

28:48

officer is pitching and

28:51

the potential militia recruits

28:53

have made their speech. Like Hawkeye wanders

28:55

away and joins in

28:58

a game of lacrosse breaks out

29:00

and you've got, it

29:03

appears to be like some of the colonials

29:05

are playing, a lot of

29:08

the Iroquois there are

29:10

also playing, but

29:12

I think the film consistently has this

29:14

sense of, if

29:17

like one of the tragedies is in play, it's not necessarily

29:20

that America is going

29:22

to

29:23

like mean the end of this brand

29:25

of like rugged individualism. Also

29:28

the notion that this type of community

29:31

will not be allowed to exist, right?

29:34

This sort of intermingling of peoples

29:38

that exists on the frontier is not

29:40

going to be sustainable.

29:43

And certainly even if it were in that very

29:45

unlikely event, it certainly will

29:47

not be allowed to given

29:49

the way politics is going to move

29:52

and the way things like the frontier, like

29:54

expansion will become institutionalized

29:57

and sort of the hard boundaries.

29:59

that will be set between

30:02

Indian versus American don't

30:05

yet exist. People in this space

30:08

don't entirely see it in

30:10

those terms yet, though obviously

30:13

the seeds of that are also

30:15

richly

30:16

planted.

30:19

In the end, the

30:21

film is going to also acknowledge

30:23

that to a degree from the moment the settler

30:26

ship showed up, the writing was

30:28

on the wall. But I think

30:30

in this moment

30:31

Hawkeye is both representative of

30:35

rugged American individualism, but

30:37

I think also there's a bit of

30:40

this is maybe as close to utopian

30:42

as man's going to get in this film that

30:45

maybe there's a different way for this

30:49

interaction to have gone.

30:51

It didn't, but you can sort of catch a glimpse

30:53

of it here. Well, there's one thing that

30:55

he leaves out and the most adaptations leave it

30:57

out of this, but it happens

31:00

early in the book. There's a conversation

31:02

in the novel between Hawkeye

31:05

and Augustin Chingachukuk and

31:07

Chingachukuk's complaining about all this land

31:09

used to be ours. Hawkeye

31:12

says, well, according to

31:15

your

31:15

old men, your tales, you

31:17

guys came from the west and drove out some other people

31:20

into the forest. And now my people

31:22

have come from the east

31:24

and they're going to, they

31:26

drive everything before them, such as the way of the

31:28

world seems to be, I can't say the

31:30

future is going to look like and things

31:32

might've been better because the white men lie through

31:34

their books,

31:36

but this is just the nature

31:39

of the world. And this ties into the whole last of Mohican's

31:41

thing, the theme of the book and the

31:43

punch line of the book that the Mexican

31:46

are dying people and have their last

31:48

moment here. But most adaptations leave out

31:50

that very pessimistic sense

31:53

that

31:54

everything's going to be kind of,

31:57

that's already written on the wall. There is no future. for

32:01

the First Nations. And I think

32:03

you're right. I think you're right that the points, there is

32:05

a couple, Hawkeye does represent and that

32:08

lacrosse game, some sort of

32:10

better alternative, I guess,

32:13

but it can't happen as long as the settlers keep coming.

32:16

And that's the whole testimony

32:18

before the Satcham, you

32:20

know, what Malga would do if

32:23

he follows the white man's path. It is just

32:25

destruction of everything.

32:27

The next sequence we get is sort

32:29

of the introduction of a lot of

32:31

the British characters we're going to meet

32:34

here. And we open actually on

32:37

Duncan Hayward

32:39

traveling to Albany to

32:42

both get his new posting to Fort William

32:44

Henry, but also to renew

32:47

his entreaties

32:49

to Coram and Rome. We open with

32:51

him looking at her likeness in

32:54

a little keepsake clasp.

33:00

Dia, you've talked about the shot a lot

33:03

in previous man hunting episodes,

33:06

the shot that comes up, the bridge, right? But

33:09

also maybe you talk a little bit

33:11

about what you see here from our old friend Dante

33:14

Sponati, who's going to become,

33:16

already is a major character in sort

33:18

of the Michael Mann career, was

33:22

on man hunting and

33:24

will be his collaborator on at

33:26

least a few other films. But

33:29

this one also feels like he's operating

33:30

in a different mode than maybe

33:33

he does for the rest of his time with Mann. I'm

33:35

curious like what you see when

33:37

you sort of look through his lens in

33:40

this film.

33:41

Sponati is a wonderful cinematographer

33:43

because he is so, you know,

33:48

one of the kind of the jokes about, it's

33:54

the Ridley Scott film, the duelist.

33:58

You know, one of the jokes to the people, like a lot of people are gonna, Oh, it's

34:00

so painterly, so painterly, so painterly. And

34:02

Ridley Scott famously is like, no, it's called the,

34:04

it just rained a whole shit ton during the production.

34:07

So that's why I'd look that way. But

34:10

Spannati really does have this sense

34:13

of this kind of neoclassical

34:16

sense of painting as

34:18

a background. And I actually don't know if

34:20

he has a background in painting. A lot of cinematographers

34:23

surprisingly do, or

34:25

really unsurprisingly do.

34:27

But there's this shot

34:29

of the bridge, which I always joke on

34:31

that, you know,

34:33

man and Spannati waited like three

34:35

days just to get this shot right.

34:38

Because it is like the perfectly mirrored

34:40

colonial bridge and it's like

34:42

framed perfectly with like just the trees

34:44

and the bridge and the water is, you know,

34:47

it's the water's got some leaves on it. It's not

34:49

pristine, but it's sick, you know, just

34:51

perfectly reflective enough to be like natural,

34:54

but like still painterly. And

34:57

it is, it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful

34:59

shot that is, you know, kind of just,

35:02

it is the kind of shot that like establishes

35:04

you are in a period film.

35:07

Um, particularly a period

35:09

film of like the 18th century. Um,

35:14

but, um, and you're like a lot of the, a

35:16

lot of the, the photography in this, Spannati

35:18

really does set scenes up as

35:21

though paintings you have seen in the Smithsonian,

35:23

like, you know, we get

35:26

shots that are repeatedly, like even

35:28

like the scene with Duncan and Cora before,

35:30

like, you know, we do get in close with them. You

35:33

know, it is, it is a British officer

35:36

proposing to, you know, the young

35:38

maid that he's in love with, um,

35:41

you know, at T in a field, like

35:45

this painting exists. There's thousands of this painting.

35:48

Um, and Spannati has just chosen

35:50

to replicate that, you know, through

35:52

the lens. Um, yeah,

35:55

he, he arranged,

35:58

he does arrange these like care.

35:59

composed tableau as a film,

36:02

a painting that man cites in the commentary,

36:05

it makes perfect sense of course, is you

36:07

know the death of Wulf by

36:10

Benjamin West, but basically that entire

36:12

genre of military

36:16

historical art that's enormously

36:18

popular about a century

36:21

after all these events, right? Like that's where

36:23

these things tend to be really like commemorated

36:27

in a lot of these cases. The

36:29

death of Wulf is closer to contemporaneous,

36:33

but

36:35

in those, all

36:37

of those like paintings are meant to

36:39

communicate

36:40

a tremendous amount of narrative

36:43

content in the frame, and

36:46

even though the viewer is supposed to know the narrative context,

36:48

right? We're supposed to look at that painting and roughly

36:50

know not only who is Wulf, but like

36:52

who are the various figures who surround him.

36:54

I can't remember if the death of Wulf is

36:56

one of the ones where they're also people are paying

36:59

to be like sort of inserted in the painting

37:01

in certain places. I think that's

37:03

true of the death of Nelson, but

37:07

we've seen there's a

37:09

bunch of those paintings, and in certain

37:11

moments like the parlay

37:14

we see later between Mon Calme and Monroe, you

37:17

see sort of the perfectly composed

37:20

like still image of the two men exchanging

37:22

a greeting, but I think for me like one of the moments that

37:24

really jumps out at me is when arguments

37:27

break out like Fort William Henry about,

37:30

you know, Monroe's obligations

37:32

to release his colonials, and

37:35

the way all the characters end up lining

37:37

up

37:38

not on opposite sides of the frame, but

37:41

also layered into the backstage

37:44

that everyone is clearly readable to

37:46

the frame. It's very

37:48

staged and composed,

37:51

and so if you freeze the image, you

37:53

could almost take it and the story

37:56

of this moment is

37:58

told through the image.

37:59

image. But at the

38:02

same time, what's so interesting is that these

38:04

paintings are almost universally like historical

38:06

whitewashes in a lot of ways,

38:08

the ones that actually exist,

38:11

because they are fundamentally like works

38:13

of imperial commemoration. Whereas

38:16

I think in all these scenes in motion, we

38:19

have these sort of recognizable forms

38:21

celebrating imperial

38:24

achievement, like conquest,

38:27

but also in these moments,

38:29

they tend to accompany the moments

38:31

of the most extreme like moral degradation

38:34

of

38:35

the imperial powers, right? These moments tend to

38:37

capture

38:38

hypocrisy more than courage,

38:41

treachery more than honor. And

38:44

so that's the other thing I find really interesting

38:46

is that all these images are like these recognizable

38:48

forms, but each time he deploys

38:51

them, they're a little bit poisoned.

38:54

But that's the thing is like, you think about

38:56

the various like the parlay and

38:58

things like that and the scene, the argument, William

39:00

Henry, and you get these moments

39:03

where if this was a painting and there

39:05

was no sound, no one was speaking.

39:08

You just saw these dramatic faces and these dramatic

39:10

men lined up and leaning towards each

39:12

other, forming a perfect pyramid. This

39:15

is like this perfect triangle in the middle

39:17

centered around like a contract on the table

39:20

sort of deal.

39:22

Yes. Okay.

39:24

When you take it out and you put it on a wall and you frame

39:26

it in a big gold leaf, or

39:29

a cocoa frame, and you hang it

39:31

at independence hall, it becomes this beacon

39:33

of nationalism. But when you put

39:35

that in action

39:37

and you set that in like celluloid

39:39

of the 90s and you have these actors

39:42

actually talking and you realize what pieces of

39:44

shit they all are, then it becomes

39:46

like, oh, hey, wait

39:49

a minute. Let's just like this, rip this facade

39:51

all the way down. And

39:53

it's great.

39:56

And we certainly start getting that piece

39:58

of shit vibe from.

39:59

the Brits real quick when Hayward arrives

40:02

and meets up with General Webb, only has one

40:05

scene. It is a memorable one

40:08

in which he

40:10

strikes a bargain with the militia

40:13

to guarantee their service.

40:16

And then Hayward, sort of the mainline

40:18

British officer after the Colonials

40:21

are out of the room, is sort of stunned

40:24

that Webb would endorse sort

40:26

of entreating colonial subjects to

40:28

honor the call

40:30

of duty. And Webb

40:32

gives this, you know, the

40:34

stereotype, like

40:36

the icon of like

40:38

the particular form of British Imperial hubris

40:40

that would be recognized from various

40:42

stories and films. I was going to

40:45

say, I don't know if there is something written into

40:47

the American Constitution that any portrayal

40:49

of the British military from the 1700s to

40:51

about, let's say the late 1800s

40:54

has to have one of these guys in it. But

40:56

this guy is in every one of these

40:58

movies, the sort of like sniveling,

41:02

sort of dishonorable, very peevish,

41:05

you know, military prim and proper guy

41:07

who is just like mostly there to get dunked

41:10

on in some fashion or another.

41:12

And makes the confident pronunciation

41:15

pronouncement that the French. Can

41:17

we cut this line in because it's my favorite

41:19

line in like, okay, we need

41:21

a history. We need to pause and

41:24

we will.

41:25

We are not going to hear because we all know it, but you're going to

41:27

hear the exact speech he gives

41:30

about the colonials and then what he

41:32

thinks of French prowess.

41:36

One has to reason with these colonials

41:39

to get them to do anything tiring, isn't it? But that's

41:41

the lay of the land. I

41:43

thought British policies make the world England,

41:47

sir. I

41:58

see you're to serve with the 35th. the regiment

42:00

of foot at Fort William Henry under

42:03

Colonel Monroe. I'll

42:06

be marching the 60th to Fort Edward. Explain

42:13

to the Major he has little

42:16

to fear from this General

42:19

Marquis de Montcalm in the first place, and

42:21

therefore scant need of a colonial militia in the

42:23

second, because the French

42:26

haven't the nature for war. Their

42:29

Latinate voluptuousness combines

42:32

with their Gallic laziness. And

42:34

the result is they'd rather eat and make love with their

42:36

faces than fight. Making

42:39

love with their faces. I

42:42

just love that their Latinate voluptuousness

42:44

combined with their Gallic laziness. It's

42:47

so beautiful. It's honestly

42:49

kind of an incredible dis, and

42:52

I have to kind of respect it.

42:55

And yet they sound so cool.

42:57

Yeah, it

43:00

is just an incredible line. You

43:03

sort of get a taste of

43:05

how truly two-faced they

43:07

will be. And of course, it's not for

43:09

nothing that in the midst of all this, it takes everyone

43:12

a long minute to realize that,

43:14

oh, there's someone else here. Not

43:16

very important. It's your guide

43:19

to find Fort William Henry. What's

43:22

your name again? Magua. And

43:24

West Studio sort of detaches from

43:26

the shadows of this frame to

43:30

sort of announce that, yeah, he'll be the

43:32

guy, and he'll be there first thing in the morning to

43:34

take them. Maybe see Darth Maul's.

43:37

Yeah. This is what he's like, I

43:39

will send my apprentice. And then just Darth Maul just shows up behind

43:42

Senator Palpatine only in

43:44

this point, Darth Maul doesn't

43:46

sign. Darth Maul, Batman.

43:49

I mean, it's one of those, depending

43:51

on your perspective, right? He emerges in the shadow

43:54

as a vengeful figure of

43:56

vengeance, right?

43:58

Yeah, it's, um. West

44:00

Doody has one of the striking faces

44:03

to begin with, but

44:06

yeah, I don't know. He is he is properly

44:09

terrifying in this film because

44:11

he just has a

44:14

like predatory gleam in

44:16

his eye in every

44:19

scene. It's just like it's like

44:21

a tiger pacing the cage, right?

44:23

He's so he's so pissed. They're they're waiting

44:25

till morning because man,

44:27

he is ready to get this revenge plot

44:30

rolling right now.

44:33

But first Duncan has to renew his

44:35

proposals to Cora.

44:40

Okay, let's talk about this because in

44:43

the commentary man is.

44:46

So I forgot the other thing that man is very proud

44:48

of with this film. Not even

44:51

proud. The other part of the commentary is man

44:53

just talking about military history like

44:56

for a couple hours while the film runs in the

44:59

background. He's really

45:01

interested in that stuff. It's very funny. It's

45:03

a very like dad ask

45:06

commentary in some ways where

45:08

it's is very much like, you

45:11

know, a lot of people don't give the Iroquois nearly

45:13

enough credit for for their democratic

45:16

institutions. Let me tell you about them. And

45:18

like films continues to play, continues

45:20

going on excursion. But one of the things

45:23

he thinks he gets into is that

45:26

one of the arcs in this film is

45:29

the way

45:32

if not America, at least the

45:35

frontiers that exist in this film is

45:37

a stage

45:39

for a woman's liberation. And

45:41

so here in this scene between Duncan

45:44

and Cora, we have the most paternalistic

45:47

exchange that we're going to get in the film. And

45:50

as he puts it, it seems like Cora doesn't even know

45:52

fully how to respond to it, because

45:55

she doesn't yet have like the

45:57

exact language to explain why does Doesn't

46:00

any of this feel like it makes sense and why is everyone asking

46:02

acting like it's normal?

46:03

I

46:06

don't know what to say, Duncan. I

46:14

truly wish they did, but my feelings don't

46:19

go beyond friendship. Don't

46:24

you see? But

46:29

friendship, isn't that a reasonable

46:32

basis for a man and woman to be married?

46:34

All else may grow in time.

46:37

Some say that's the way of it. Some?

46:40

Cousin Eugenie and my father. Where are they? Cora.

46:43

In my heart, I know, one swear

46:45

joint will be the most marvelous couple in

46:47

London. I'm certain

46:50

of that. So

46:52

why not let those whom you trust, your father,

46:54

help settle what's best for you? I'm

46:57

not

47:23

as confident as man that

47:26

the film fucking nails feminism.

47:29

But I am curious

47:32

how you all end up feeling about

47:35

Cora's role here as the female

47:38

lead. Man

47:41

films in general don't have a lot of great

47:43

roles for women. I think Thief

47:45

is one of the outliers. Thief

47:47

is a stand up. Does

47:50

this join that list or

47:52

is it too pained by numbers? So it's really

47:54

funny because I saw this film when

47:57

I was 92.

47:59

My dad took me to go

48:01

see this opening day Because

48:04

I had to go see it with my dad like my dad's

48:06

like new Michael Mann film James Fenimore Cooper

48:08

film You know seven years war American

48:11

his colonial history. We're good. We're gonna go see this damn

48:13

movie And I'm like, okay, I don't care about

48:15

any of this at this point in my life

48:19

And I just remember watching this scene and feeling

48:22

so embarrassed for

48:24

Steve Waddington Like even as an

48:26

actor like just watching this scene and just being

48:29

like oh god you were the most embarrassing

48:31

human being I have Ever seen

48:33

in my entire short life and

48:35

like then meanwhile being like Madeline Stowe

48:38

fucking rules I

48:41

Like this beginning my like obsession

48:43

with like Madeline Stowe fucking ruling I

48:47

Think I think in the hands

48:50

of a lesser actress this role could

48:52

have been Like a real

48:55

it would have been a wet tissue. Yeah Yeah, it

48:57

could have just completely fallen apart But Madeline Stowe

48:59

had and I also have a big fan of hers and

49:02

I think she has the energy and

49:04

the vigor to sort of like

49:06

combat

49:07

the more like You know stereotypical

49:10

parts of the role and like give it some

49:12

energy and some character that

49:14

it might not have otherwise had

49:16

That's something she's actually like I feel like she's kind

49:18

of good at doing like picking

49:20

these roles where She has to

49:22

be somewhat of an accessory

49:25

to you know

49:26

an ineffective man Right,

49:29

but also like, you know working

49:31

in that space as best she can and owning

49:34

her space that she can carve out of it

49:38

So, yeah like I think I think she does that

49:40

with the very limited space that The

49:43

character of Cora is afforded in this

49:46

there's there's just a lot more for Her

49:48

to do in this movie just by nature of

49:50

it not being a movie that completely revolves

49:53

around, you know One or two guys

49:55

like it is much more like yes,

49:58

obviously, they know they Lewis is the star but like

49:59

there is a bit more of an ensemble going on here.

50:02

And it doesn't feel like this character can

50:05

fall by the wayside the way a lot of like, you

50:07

know, the wife and girlfriend characters tend to in

50:09

man stuff. It's just the story isn't designed

50:12

that way and it just can't work that way.

50:15

Yeah, I completely agree with that.

50:19

I think you called out

50:21

how embarrassing it is. And it is, I think

50:23

the other thing that

50:26

Hayward has to come across,

50:29

it's a tricky performance because by

50:31

the end of this, like Hayward has

50:33

a lot of redeeming qualities. Cora even concedes

50:36

as much that there are admirable

50:38

things about this guy. But he is also

50:41

maybe more than anyone else, the

50:43

what we mean when we say like a man

50:45

of his time. This

50:47

is a guy who has

50:50

just brought on so many, he's

50:52

drawn so deeply of like unconscious

50:54

assumptions about the way the world

50:56

should work and his place in it and

50:59

what should be the life that should

51:01

be prepared for him. That

51:03

it is,

51:04

you feel for Cora almost,

51:06

the degree to which it is crushing, to

51:09

have to be the guy who

51:12

tells him that like, hey, the life you

51:14

think you're going to lead is not gonna happen,

51:16

at least not with me. And

51:18

so when he makes that desperate plea when

51:21

she's like, my feelings, this is her second

51:24

refusal. She refused him in Europe,

51:26

we find. She says

51:28

my feelings have not changed. And

51:31

she can't fully explain why it doesn't make sense.

51:33

She agrees it seems to make sense on paper.

51:36

But his response is

51:38

to be like, well, if you're not sure, if

51:41

you're not sure, maybe you should just

51:42

listen to me and listen to your

51:44

dad, people who care for you and

51:47

trust our judgment about what's

51:49

best for you.

51:51

And to him, that's

51:52

a good argument.

51:55

And the thing is, I think we all seen

51:57

a million movies where these sorts

51:59

of show up.

51:59

types are just played as like comic,

52:03

yeah, comic stereotypes, right? Like, oh,

52:06

look how old-timey and up

52:08

his own ass this guy is. Hayward,

52:11

again, verges on

52:13

being that. But the thing

52:15

that I find like I still have sympathy for

52:17

in this moment is that nothing

52:20

has prepared him for the possibility that like

52:22

a good eligible match

52:24

just isn't gonna work because like

52:27

that spark isn't there. That excitement,

52:29

that affection, is not there.

52:33

And he

52:35

can't handle that and all he

52:37

can sort of fall back on is, but

52:39

everyone agrees it would be such a good idea.

52:42

Why can't you just go along with it?

52:46

And so Korra ends up punting again and

52:48

being like, yes, I will continue

52:50

to reflect on whether this is the case.

52:54

It's an interesting, like Hayward

52:56

too is an interesting character because he is a guy

52:59

who's going to be a clown

53:02

for a lot of this, going to fail most of

53:04

the moral tests that are set before him

53:07

and in the end like do

53:09

maybe one very important thing right.

53:11

And I think like it's

53:14

a well-executed scene, but

53:17

again for so much of this, the conflicts

53:19

have to be carried

53:21

by

53:22

Madeline Stowe's physical performance because

53:25

so much of what she's, this task

53:28

set before her is

53:30

to react rather

53:32

than like state. Yeah.

53:36

Well, I see. One of the things I think is interesting

53:38

is that Hayward's character, it

53:42

is a kind of constancy

53:45

of like being this

53:46

guy, being very specifically

53:49

this guy that allows

53:50

him

53:53

and allows

53:55

us to accept when he does it, make

53:57

the move that he does at the end. without

54:01

his feeling put upon

54:03

or forced or overly contrived. It's

54:05

just kind of like, yeah, no, he's

54:07

that guy. And he always was that

54:09

guy. It's just that guy isn't going

54:12

to keep you alive in the wilderness.

54:14

He's not going to make you a happy, he's

54:18

not gonna be a great husband

54:20

if you are kind of a strong-willed

54:22

modern woman in the 1800s.

54:28

But he is that guy at the end who is going to be

54:30

like, no, no, no, I'm gonna just tell

54:32

them to take me because I recognize

54:35

that you are the one that can keep them alive in the wilderness

54:37

and not me.

54:38

And yeah, I think the only thing about him that

54:40

feels like 100% genuine is the fact that

54:43

he does seem to genuinely care for this woman.

54:45

And obviously his way of going about

54:47

it

54:48

is incredibly paternalistic and incredibly

54:50

disregarding of her own feelings and her

54:52

own desires. But like you said,

54:54

he's a man of his time. And I imagine

54:57

a lot of people in with sort of like high-ranking

55:00

military soldierly stations

55:03

were taught to believe it's like, okay, well, you

55:05

do this. If you're a good soldier, then you get to

55:07

have this life of comfort and the wife

55:10

you want and

55:12

the family you want and all that stuff.

55:14

So I kind of understand where it's coming from. And I think if

55:16

that, like you said, if that part

55:18

of that character didn't read as true,

55:21

his gesture at the end would feel completely

55:23

empty. But like, again, I think the performance

55:25

is good enough that he manages to make

55:28

that part feel natural, even as

55:30

he does these kinds of like sniveling and

55:32

underhanded things off to the side.

55:36

And I mean, to give credit to man,

55:38

a lot of these are choices of adaptation

55:40

again. Right. Because in

55:43

the novel, Hayward isn't interested

55:45

in the mild-mannered fair Alice

55:49

and the strong, active

55:51

Quora is the one who dies, not

55:54

Alice in the novel. So

55:57

man has adapted it so that...

55:59

Hayward is attracted to the strong, vigorous,

56:04

self-reliant

56:05

Cora and poor Alice is

56:07

almost an afterthought in this film, but just kind

56:10

of a shame. Alice

56:12

is kind of dirty. Yeah, Joanie doesn't

56:14

have a lot to do as Alice. This film

56:16

besides looks sad where

56:18

Cora is, you know, she's, you know, these

56:20

strong vigorous lovages, the strong

56:22

female lead that would

56:25

become a punchline a decade

56:28

later. But I think that

56:30

there is some, if there's some adaptational

56:32

choices here by man to highlight both

56:34

what Hayward is looking for

56:35

isn't necessarily

56:38

the quiet demure

56:40

British wife. There's

56:42

something in Cora, there's that strength, maybe

56:44

a strength that he feels he lacks. Maybe

56:46

he's just really attracted to Madeline

56:49

Stowe cause she's Madeline Stowe, I mean, why not?

56:53

But I think there's some real conscious

56:56

messaging or it's

56:59

done like this for a reason to

57:03

move the love story of

57:05

Hayward and Alice who get together

57:08

in the novel into the unrequited

57:10

love and self sacrifice in

57:13

the 92 movie.

57:17

Yeah, I think, sorry,

57:19

do you have something? Well, I was

57:21

just gonna talk about the source

57:23

of,

57:24

like for the remainder of this film, I

57:27

love this little moment when we realize how

57:29

close all these characters are. Alice's

57:33

unalloyed delight

57:35

at seeing Hayward is there. That

57:38

he really is a friend of the family and

57:40

having just gone through this kind of grueling scene

57:43

with Cora immediately

57:45

sort of puts on a brave face and they continue

57:47

to have what looks like a lovely,

57:50

a lovely end last

57:52

afternoon.

57:53

So, and it does kind of bum me out

57:56

that for much of the rest of this film, almost until

57:58

the end, Alice. Alice's

58:00

character note is going to be like,

58:03

damn, she's so traumatized. That's so

58:05

sad. But Jodie Mae makes incredible

58:07

blood-borne NPC. Yeah, she's

58:10

basically just having the worst 48 hours

58:12

anyone in that particular

58:14

region is having. She goes from this incredibly

58:18

bubbly, happy-go-lucky, like, oh, I'm

58:20

going to see the wilderness and it's

58:22

going to be fun to literally every

58:24

awful thing that could happen to her is happening. It

58:28

borders in a different-toned movie.

58:31

It would be like a Disney family comedy of

58:33

just

58:33

bad shit happening to her. It's really

58:35

funny because it reminds me of all of the stories

58:38

of the – and let's be real

58:41

here. These are weird settler

58:44

colonial sexual fantasies of

58:47

like, I was taken by the Indians.

58:50

We

58:52

get this version of that where

58:54

it's just like, no, it's always

58:57

just a bad time. You

58:59

will not enjoy it. There's nothing particularly

59:02

romantic about it.

59:04

Yeah. Even though we get this

59:06

weird, it's unspoken,

59:10

unaddressed, but visually it is

59:12

set up that Alice and Unka's

59:15

have this thing. The

59:18

magwa part just kills it. Oh

59:20

my God. Her Lady Boner for Unka

59:22

is just destroyed by magwa

59:25

just like running off with her. Yeah,

59:28

we will – oh man, we will get to that. It

59:32

is –

59:34

that entire Danima

59:36

is something. But

59:38

we're starting to get to the source of – at least

59:41

the first source, stage one of

59:44

the complete traumatization

59:47

of Alice as we get to this ambush

59:49

where – first of

59:51

all again,

59:55

this is a movie that hinges on great location

59:57

scouting. This forest,

59:59

they –

59:59

they march into. Man

1:00:02

talks about he was looking for old

1:00:04

growth forest on the East Coast to

1:00:07

sort of capture this moment as it would

1:00:09

have existed in the 1700s. Sadly found out, hey,

1:00:15

hey man, they cut it all down. There

1:00:17

is no more truly old growth forest

1:00:19

here except for like this parking

1:00:22

lot size parcel

1:00:24

that exists in

1:00:26

near like a state park

1:00:28

in I think like North Carolina. That's

1:00:31

what actually, they shoot this scene very

1:00:33

carefully to

1:00:36

sort of like have the camera looking into the

1:00:38

deepest parts of the forest and

1:00:41

to sort of conceal the degree to which like

1:00:43

what surrounds it is replanted. It's

1:00:46

really funny because my dad,

1:00:50

my dad like, you know, my whole life was my

1:00:52

dad taking me camping and

1:00:54

to like national like,

1:00:57

you know, battlefield parks and things like

1:00:59

that.

1:01:00

Like that was what we did on

1:01:02

his weekends. And so

1:01:05

for summer, one summer we did, we

1:01:08

went down to North Carolina and we had to go to chimney

1:01:10

rock and we had to go to all of the

1:01:12

falls that were used in the

1:01:15

movie. Oh no.

1:01:16

Oh yeah. Including the chemical plant falls?

1:01:19

Yeah. Oh no, we went to all of it. And it was like, what are those

1:01:21

things where it's just kind of like, you know, it was actually

1:01:23

really interesting. It was one of the more interesting cause like a lot

1:01:25

of these trips were really awful because I

1:01:28

am not a camping person and

1:01:30

I am not a civil war, you know, American battlefield

1:01:33

hit person. I don't

1:01:35

care about earthworks from the 1700s. I just don't. I

1:01:39

do. I'm like, Oh man, I wish I could have gone.

1:01:42

Yeah. No, I was just sitting there. I was just like, wow, damn,

1:01:44

like, you know, you know, Patrick, dad's all

1:01:46

obsessed with Patrick because he thinks he's check. But

1:01:49

like really he needs to like, you know, hang out with you,

1:01:51

Rob. But like

1:01:55

he took these places and

1:01:57

it was really fantastic to see, you know,

1:02:00

having gone and seen the movie and seen the way the movie

1:02:02

was shot and then seeing the places in real life.

1:02:04

As a photographer, it was

1:02:07

really

1:02:08

instructive in the

1:02:10

way in which you can shape reality

1:02:13

in a photograph and in film

1:02:16

because none of these places look

1:02:19

like that. No fucking way. No.

1:02:22

Modernity has fully crept into all

1:02:24

of them. They

1:02:26

were talking about-

1:02:29

DuPont State Recreational

1:02:31

Forest, I think is where they fell. When DuPont's

1:02:34

name is on there, you're going to have a bad time.

1:02:36

It's the most gorgeous falls

1:02:39

in the film.

1:02:40

It is. It is. It's

1:02:42

beautiful if you find the exact

1:02:44

right angle and the

1:02:47

instant you are off-axis from that,

1:02:49

no. Gone.

1:02:52

Yeah. Yeah. I will say one thing

1:02:54

that I did appreciate about this is that whatever

1:02:56

lengths they went to, and while some of this definitely

1:02:59

does not look or feel modern, it does feel like

1:03:02

upstate New York. I've

1:03:05

been to enough state parks and enough outdoor

1:03:07

areas up there. They

1:03:09

captured the feel and it doesn't feel

1:03:11

southern. It does feel like northeast.

1:03:14

Yeah.

1:03:14

I think it's just the perfect

1:03:16

quality of the way the

1:03:19

rock breaks out of the soil. Yeah.

1:03:22

It

1:03:24

just does feel rocky

1:03:26

and riven by creeks and lakes in a way

1:03:28

that is very, very upstate.

1:03:31

It's really well executed.

1:03:35

The degree to which they are creating

1:03:38

what looks like pristine colonial

1:03:41

wilderness from the 1700s out

1:03:43

of, again, literally what we're talking about

1:03:46

is a fast run of rapidly

1:03:48

falling water that is used as a runoff

1:03:51

dumping site for a DuPont chemical

1:03:53

plant. It is an incredible

1:03:55

shot. Then the commentary man is

1:03:57

talking about how the smell...

1:03:59

now just brings tears to your eyes. And

1:04:02

so they're having the shot pretending that, yep, we

1:04:04

are in the wilderness next

1:04:07

to this like beautiful natural

1:04:09

wonder. And the reality is the natural

1:04:11

wonder is also being used as a really

1:04:14

good sewage line for a

1:04:16

chemical plant to just dump its

1:04:18

effluent.

1:04:22

So we get the ambush and the sort

1:04:24

of the

1:04:25

tip off that all hell's

1:04:27

about to break loose is Magua's

1:04:30

really insistent that we not slow down. We just keep

1:04:32

going. Like, let's not pause. Let's

1:04:35

go to this place. I'm showing you. The

1:04:38

water's better there. Yeah. And

1:04:40

it's away from the DuPont plant. And

1:04:46

Duncan is getting more and

1:04:48

more frustrated with him and says the women are tired.

1:04:50

We rest now.

1:04:54

And Magua

1:04:58

lapses into

1:05:02

like,

1:05:03

I don't know which Iroquois language

1:05:05

he falls into, whether he's speaking like Mohawk

1:05:08

or Huron, because

1:05:11

he is pretending to be Mohawk at this point.

1:05:14

But he sort of mutters to himself what

1:05:17

he thinks of the dynamic

1:05:21

between the way the English treat

1:05:24

their gentle ladies and the way they fawn over

1:05:26

them.

1:05:28

And

1:05:30

hey, like Duncan

1:05:32

can hear, you know what I mean? You can tell when someone's

1:05:35

saying something not very nice sometimes.

1:05:37

And he asks him, what did you say? And

1:05:40

Magua turns to him, just stares him down and says, Magua

1:05:44

understand English very well.

1:05:46

And it's just a beautiful like line of double entendre

1:05:49

about like just before he's about to literally swing

1:05:51

the axe. Right. Um,

1:05:54

where this is a guy who feels like he has really

1:05:56

made a study of these people and

1:05:58

their quirks.

1:05:59

and is just about

1:06:02

through pretending.

1:06:05

And so he springs his trap, and

1:06:07

crucially just before he can do that, Hawkeye,

1:06:10

Unkus, and Chinggashuk do

1:06:14

stumble on the path of the

1:06:17

war party that is laying in this ambush. But

1:06:19

we get our first battle

1:06:21

sequence of the film, and

1:06:24

I

1:06:25

think it's a doozy. For me, for a number

1:06:27

of years, this kind of, this

1:06:29

both sort of established

1:06:32

for me my image of what this type of warfare

1:06:35

on the frontier looked like. But

1:06:38

also in a lot of ways, it is like an

1:06:40

instantiation of myths about what

1:06:43

happened to

1:06:44

British European trained armies

1:06:48

heading into the back country and the type

1:06:50

of war that awaited them there. And

1:06:52

so we get an

1:06:55

action sequence where

1:06:57

Magua

1:06:58

triggers the ambush by

1:07:00

brushing past Calmini, who's in this

1:07:02

movie for some reason. There's

1:07:05

a few of those, like Pete Postlewaite's also

1:07:07

in there, like they just had some British

1:07:09

actors. They had some British actors just laying around.

1:07:12

They're like, all right, here you go.

1:07:14

Postlewaite makes sense, like isn't Postlewaite,

1:07:17

he was in the Sharps Rifles show, right? And

1:07:19

he's the,

1:07:20

Oh yeah, he was in that, Obadiah Hakeswell.

1:07:23

Yeah. He's just got one of those like really

1:07:26

menacing, just a really menacing,

1:07:28

rugged looking English dude. But

1:07:30

Magua finds the most gormless

1:07:33

English soldier, puts a

1:07:35

hatchet in him, and

1:07:37

then the fight starts and the Brits are

1:07:40

trying to fight

1:07:42

as they would a European foe, trying

1:07:45

to do like mass ranks firing

1:07:47

drills against a

1:07:50

native opponent that is quite

1:07:53

happy to lurk in the tree line

1:07:56

and just wait for them to shoot their shot and

1:07:58

then go in.

1:07:59

And it's a bloodbath, but also

1:08:02

a

1:08:03

hell of a battle scene. And maybe it's sort

1:08:05

of the first,

1:08:07

the first scene where I think the pure

1:08:09

spectacle that we're in for in this film

1:08:11

starts to become apparent as well. Because

1:08:15

both when I saw this ages and

1:08:17

ages ago, like on VHS

1:08:19

with a stereo mix, and then

1:08:22

watching it

1:08:23

now after man has sort of retouched

1:08:26

the film in places with a surround

1:08:28

soundtrack,

1:08:30

it's just an incredible sounding

1:08:33

film in addition to the visuals.

1:08:36

And this scene is just

1:08:38

so vivid in the way like music

1:08:41

and effects are mixed. So

1:08:44

that on the one hand, like the cinematic adventure

1:08:46

film aspect comes through loud and

1:08:49

clear. But then so does the attempt

1:08:51

at like documentary style realism

1:08:54

as this fight unfolds, which

1:08:57

only goes so far because

1:09:02

by 1992 standards, I would say fight

1:09:05

choreography is pretty great here. But

1:09:08

I think the standards of what you'd see

1:09:10

in the late 90s, early 2000s, when

1:09:13

like wire work is becoming more common, when

1:09:16

there's a lot more like emphasis on actors

1:09:18

doing all their own stunts, maybe

1:09:20

like the moves are a little bit over choreographed

1:09:23

and slow. You can see Daniel

1:09:25

Day-Lewis doing like a carefully

1:09:28

timed blade drill with some of these

1:09:30

extras as they fight. It

1:09:32

still looks really good. But

1:09:35

definitely like if you compare this to the

1:09:38

extremes man is going to go to

1:09:40

when it comes time to like shoot collateral

1:09:42

for instance, or heat,

1:09:45

this is a little more restrained. Though

1:09:47

I also wonder some of that,

1:09:50

is some of that protecting frankly

1:09:53

very elderly Russell, Russell Means

1:09:56

in this film, because he's going

1:09:58

to have to do a lot of action stars.

1:09:59

off at a pretty advanced

1:10:02

age. To

1:10:04

an extent,

1:10:05

every one of this movie moves

1:10:07

at the pace that a reasonably fit 50

1:10:10

or 60-year-old could move. Maybe

1:10:13

just a little faster in Daniel Day-Lewis's

1:10:16

case, but that seems to be the approach

1:10:18

they're taking.

1:10:21

The opening of this

1:10:23

battle scene with Magua, just hanging

1:10:25

back and then walking, turning around,

1:10:29

walking toward, further up the

1:10:31

column. Then just

1:10:34

the shot behind Magua's

1:10:36

head, almost like the way we'd

1:10:38

film, the way the cameras are in

1:10:40

character action games. Now really it's the same vantage

1:10:43

point. Then we get the shot and

1:10:45

you can see so clearly. Just

1:10:47

the smiling British

1:10:50

soldier, he's got

1:10:52

a grin on his face. He's just happy

1:10:54

doing his thing, not completely

1:10:56

oblivious to what is happening. Oh, there's

1:10:58

an Indian walking by him. That's so interesting.

1:11:01

Even seems to be giving a friendly smile to the camera,

1:11:03

which is bound

1:11:04

with POV. Yes, he's giving a very friendly

1:11:06

smile. Then

1:11:10

that shot has stuck with me my

1:11:12

entire life because

1:11:14

that

1:11:15

is the first time I ever saw an

1:11:17

Indian get to be badass in a movie

1:11:20

or television.

1:11:22

At this time,

1:11:25

like 90s, 92, I didn't see dances with wolves. No

1:11:27

one wanted to take me to that. No one really

1:11:29

cared. My grandfather wasn't interested in it. The native

1:11:31

side of my family was just like,

1:11:33

nah, my dad didn't want to go see it because

1:11:35

it wasn't historical enough.

1:11:42

We had

1:11:44

like Danny from like

1:11:46

Hey Dude, I think might've been

1:11:48

native. Then

1:11:51

we had like Tiger Lily

1:11:54

from Disney's Peter Pan, maybe

1:11:58

Northern Exposure.

1:11:59

trying to think of what we're saying. We're saying slim

1:12:02

pickings. Like it was really, really

1:12:04

pathetic. And when it was, it was, you know,

1:12:07

Graham green, you know, who was just

1:12:09

kind of like friendly, a little

1:12:11

chubby. He was like, you know, kind of your

1:12:13

grandpa who just like was nicer

1:12:16

than your grandpa. The uncle

1:12:18

who gave you your first beer, you know, like

1:12:20

he doesn't lead as like an action hero. Yeah.

1:12:23

Um,

1:12:23

and then we get fucking

1:12:25

West duty, just completely

1:12:28

caving in a British like little like

1:12:30

jerk offs head while he's smiling.

1:12:33

Anyone can react when he pulls the

1:12:36

musket up into a hip shot and like

1:12:38

it blows away

1:12:40

the next dude before anyone can react. And then it's

1:12:42

just gone. It is just gone.

1:12:44

Oh good. Like that was like

1:12:47

so crucial. Being able to see like a

1:12:49

native dude like going rip shit. Like

1:12:53

that was a game changer in 92.

1:12:56

And certainly like this scene, uh, and

1:12:59

I probably the later ambush scene

1:13:01

are both trying to get across, uh, some

1:13:04

ideas. I, this

1:13:08

gets, there's a lot of mythologizing

1:13:11

about

1:13:12

British performance in the Americas, both

1:13:16

in this war and, uh, particularly

1:13:18

in the American revolution where like, there's

1:13:20

these mythologies of like, and

1:13:23

they were just unprepared for these wily colonial

1:13:25

riflemen shooting from, you know, behind

1:13:27

the cover and refusing to fight open field battle.

1:13:30

And then, you know, you read more of the history and it's like,

1:13:33

George Washington, it's like, I need some motherfuckers

1:13:36

to fight open field battle and

1:13:38

the like predominant problem of the

1:13:40

colonial army is could anyone

1:13:42

please for the love of God go fight uh,

1:13:44

in a line. But the

1:13:47

other thing is like,

1:13:49

part of the story of like the British experience

1:13:51

here is that they do get a lot better

1:13:54

at waging this kind of war very, very

1:13:56

quickly. Uh, they learn how to fight

1:13:59

a,

1:13:59

uh, backwoods, uh, conflict,

1:14:03

um, in, in a space of years. But I do feel

1:14:05

like maybe at this stage it's portrayal

1:14:09

of a completely out of its depth and

1:14:12

unprepared British officer corps

1:14:14

and army

1:14:16

might actually be

1:14:18

a pretty fair diagnosis

1:14:20

of what's going on for, for the,

1:14:22

for the, for the, for the, uh, the red coats in

1:14:26

the 17 fifties. Um, this

1:14:28

is the Braddock expedition, right? This is the

1:14:32

battle of Monongahela, uh,

1:14:34

where Braddock, you know, uh, with George Washington,

1:14:36

his side goes to Fort Duquesne

1:14:38

or to disarm or take Fort Duquesne and is,

1:14:41

uh, ambushed and does

1:14:43

his column is entirely, is pretty much entirely

1:14:46

destroyed. Uh, Washington has

1:14:48

like

1:14:48

three horses shot out from under him and narrowly

1:14:50

escaped with his life, barely escaped with his life.

1:14:53

Um, that is, was

1:14:55

one of the defining, uh, encounters

1:14:58

of the British and the war that

1:15:00

happened

1:15:01

before the seven years were even served

1:15:04

in Europe. That was like 1755. The war in Europe hadn't even

1:15:07

started yet. Uh, and Braddock

1:15:09

was annihilated. This is, this is, this is, this is

1:15:11

to, to, to to bird forest. It is,

1:15:13

you know, a line traveling and

1:15:15

getting caught when it's not, doesn't expect

1:15:17

to get caught. Um, this

1:15:20

is again, an invention of man, uh,

1:15:22

for the story, but I think it is there entirely

1:15:25

for the narrative purpose to show that the

1:15:27

British troops, the British red coats

1:15:30

are out of their element. They

1:15:31

are

1:15:33

not just colonizers, but in a way

1:15:35

they are invaders. They do not belong here.

1:15:38

They are out of place, um, and

1:15:41

do not, and should not be giving orders to

1:15:43

the colonials and should not expect to have a permanent

1:15:45

empire here. Um, and I

1:15:47

think it's a very well done ambush scene.

1:15:49

I think it is, it's small scale. This

1:15:52

isn't a huge line like we'll see in

1:15:54

the, uh, massacre after

1:15:56

the fall of Fort William Henry. It

1:15:59

is,

1:15:59

just a small squad expecting,

1:16:03

thinking they're surrounded by friends or at least quiet,

1:16:06

trusting their guide and then getting

1:16:08

the line annihilated. This was the sort of thing that

1:16:10

happens to

1:16:12

Imperial armies going through land

1:16:15

they think they own. This is not

1:16:17

the, they aren't, it wasn't the first army to have

1:16:20

that happen. The Braddock's army wasn't the first and

1:16:23

Hayward's little squad would

1:16:26

kind of be an example of the sort of thing

1:16:28

the British would encounter or at least be

1:16:30

very afraid of for a long

1:16:32

time. After Braddock's expedition they set up, you

1:16:34

know, parallel lines, they set up scouting

1:16:36

to avoid this sort of disaster again.

1:16:40

But this was, this

1:16:41

is Monongahela, this is a

1:16:43

fictional Monongahela on

1:16:46

a smaller scale. I think it's, I think it is very well

1:16:48

done for 1992. I think

1:16:51

it stands very well today

1:16:54

and the surprise is

1:16:56

a legitimate surprise,

1:16:59

I think both, not the actors

1:17:01

look surprised and I think if you are seeing

1:17:03

the show for the first time in 1992, you

1:17:06

know, you kind of get the sense because you know, Magua

1:17:08

creeps out of the darkness, that he's not the

1:17:10

nicest guy. But you're

1:17:11

probably not expecting

1:17:13

the scale of this, you don't expect just three

1:17:16

people to survive this. I think

1:17:19

it's a very, very well done scene.

1:17:21

It's very funny. Later in

1:17:23

the film I think Duncan

1:17:26

quotes Casualty Vigar where, and

1:17:28

Hawkeye, this might have been added in later

1:17:30

actually by Mann, there's three versions

1:17:33

of this film. There was a DVD

1:17:35

release where he added

1:17:37

more battle scenes. It's

1:17:40

like five minutes longer than Theatrical Head, but

1:17:42

the version that's out now on Blu-ray and everywhere

1:17:44

is like 114 minutes. So it's just a couple

1:17:46

minutes longer than Theatrical version.

1:17:48

But I feel like I don't remember

1:17:50

in the early versions of this film the

1:17:53

implication that anybody survived

1:17:55

that attack but the characters. Now

1:17:57

at the end of the fight Hawkeye says,

1:17:59

your wounded should, your wounded

1:18:02

survivors should walk back to Albany.

1:18:05

We can continue on foot. But,

1:18:09

and then Hayward later says the 18 were killed

1:18:11

in this ambush. And man, I watched the scene a bunch

1:18:13

of times. I've seen like the shot of like

1:18:15

the British column, like after

1:18:18

the fighting stops.

1:18:20

Everybody's dead. I don't know what anyone's

1:18:22

talking about. Like everyone

1:18:25

is dead. Like the

1:18:27

only British characters who still have a pulse beside

1:18:29

the main characters are guys who are clearly

1:18:32

like about 20 minutes of like agony

1:18:35

before they expire in the woods and become

1:18:37

like ant food. Like it's just,

1:18:39

it's brutal.

1:18:42

But

1:18:44

right as, so

1:18:46

the other thing that comes through here is there's, this

1:18:48

is personal for Magua. He wants to

1:18:51

personally split heads.

1:18:55

And then once the ambushes is

1:18:57

underway, he starts trying

1:18:59

to carve his way toward

1:19:01

the Monroe sisters who

1:19:05

are preparing for a last ditch. Like

1:19:07

Cora is armed. Like

1:19:10

Cora

1:19:12

is armed. Duncan is,

1:19:14

is preparing to make a last stand here. And

1:19:17

then right on cue here, a volley

1:19:19

of shots ring out from the woods, bunch of Huron

1:19:22

fall and outcome.

1:19:26

Our, our, our, our

1:19:28

woodsmen to the rescue.

1:19:31

And they immediately just start

1:19:33

buzz sawing through the

1:19:36

Huron. It's, it's, it's very much like, okay, now the

1:19:39

heroes have arrived and there's only one person

1:19:42

in the war party that's on their level and

1:19:44

that's Magua. And he sees where when

1:19:46

a fight is lost and kind

1:19:48

of vanishes, but we do get that to that theme of

1:19:51

you do not belong here. We

1:19:53

get

1:19:54

Hayward

1:19:55

not able to really identify that

1:19:58

there's a second party.

1:19:59

of what Indians have just

1:20:02

shown up and he starts trying

1:20:04

to

1:20:05

Like draw a bead on

1:20:07

I think I think it's Chinga's truck

1:20:10

Yeah, he goes into the woods to chase down one last

1:20:12

her own and

1:20:14

Hawkeye

1:20:16

grabs his gun points the barrel toward toward

1:20:19

the sky and Just says in case

1:20:21

your aim is any better than your judgment. This

1:20:24

movie has a lot of great one-liners It

1:20:27

really does It's just brutal

1:20:31

But yeah, this is the complete

1:20:33

contempt of we have rescued

1:20:35

from this but we have to acknowledge

1:20:39

That you had to be really incompetent

1:20:41

to find yourself in this predicament and

1:20:45

So they agree to lead The

1:20:48

Monroe's and Duncan on

1:20:50

to Fort William Henry But

1:20:53

first they come to the Cameron's farm

1:20:55

and discover that it and the people who live

1:20:57

there have all

1:20:59

been destroyed and it was clearly a Punitive

1:21:04

war raid and not just banditry

1:21:07

Because all the all

1:21:09

the valuables includes including clothes we're

1:21:13

left behind which I do appreciate a movie

1:21:15

pointing out that like

1:21:17

clothes used to be really really valuable and

1:21:19

so like you would strip the dead because Shoes

1:21:22

clothes linens. These things are enormously valuable

1:21:26

Back in the day

1:21:28

But all this has been left It

1:21:30

was clearly a massacre

1:21:32

for the sake of carrying out a massacre and

1:21:35

we got our first real like heated

1:21:37

exchange between Cora and Hawkeye

1:21:41

Cora wishes to give these folks a proper

1:21:43

burial and She

1:21:46

doesn't realize that these are the closest

1:21:48

family friends That

1:21:51

their new companions probably have and

1:21:55

Hawkeye sort of angrily tells them like these

1:21:58

people are not strangers and

1:21:59

You know they stay as they lie and

1:22:02

that sets up their

1:22:05

first like evening conversation,

1:22:07

which I think is One

1:22:09

of the important like statements of purpose of

1:22:12

this film, which is sort of these

1:22:15

contrasting these worldviews

1:22:17

Where she asks Hawkeye later?

1:22:21

What Tran like

1:22:23

what was really the significance of what transpired back

1:22:26

at the Cameron's farm who were they and

1:22:29

Why doesn't it bother him that

1:22:32

there's no that his friends aren't

1:22:34

gonna get a grave? They're not gonna get a burial

1:22:37

and so he tells he tells two stories one

1:22:39

is a earquake

1:22:41

creation myth and the other

1:22:43

is

1:22:45

Kind of the creation myth of the

1:22:47

American frontier

1:22:50

We'll talk about the the first one the the

1:22:53

the origin story of the Cameron's something's very

1:22:55

clear about here is

1:22:57

These are folks who were indentured servants

1:23:00

In Virginia as he explained they

1:23:03

were seven eight years indentured in

1:23:05

Virginia And once they

1:23:08

were

1:23:09

their obligations were discharged Which

1:23:12

is the privilege that? white

1:23:14

indentures had that was not extended to

1:23:17

African slaves

1:23:19

these folks lit out for

1:23:21

The land they'd come here to find except of course

1:23:24

all of it is taken in the

1:23:29

What's the way to What's

1:23:32

that what's the term for the colonial term for like the the

1:23:34

granting of colonies Charter

1:23:38

Yeah

1:23:39

Like all all the land there is basically

1:23:41

taken and spoken for in the like

1:23:44

official charters And so people like

1:23:46

the Cameron's have to push out In

1:23:49

order to find

1:23:51

any sort of opportunity for land

1:23:54

and trade that isn't already

1:23:58

Taken or monopolized In

1:24:00

the more settled parts of the colonies. I think there's

1:24:02

something else that you know, I

1:24:04

think there's a there's a strain of If

1:24:08

not, I don't know if man is so

1:24:11

We talked about a thief how like the

1:24:13

the speech James Kahn gives is

1:24:16

very close to just like straight straight

1:24:18

socialism And

1:24:21

I do feel like there's there's a lot there's a

1:24:23

lot of that

1:24:24

Undergirding man's work and I think some of that's

1:24:26

here where there there's this Understand

1:24:29

that people like the Cameron's On

1:24:31

the one hand they're the tip of the spear in

1:24:33

some ways for settler colonialism

1:24:37

on the other hand, they're enormously

1:24:39

sympathetic figures because the

1:24:41

opportunities given to people like that were

1:24:44

so

1:24:45

like prescribed That

1:24:48

of course these folks had no choice at

1:24:50

least as far as they could see it Then

1:24:53

to push deeper into

1:24:55

a land that's not their own

1:24:58

in hopes of making part of it theirs and

1:25:01

so that's that's his explanation of like

1:25:03

What?

1:25:05

What are people doing out here? That's kind of that's

1:25:07

kind of course question. Why are these people here?

1:25:09

They're so far beyond any of

1:25:12

the traditional colonial trade. Like why are

1:25:14

they here? They're subsistence. They're

1:25:16

doing subsistence farming You

1:25:18

know in an enormously inhospitable

1:25:21

place and it looks like enormously hard

1:25:23

life and Hawkeye's responses

1:25:26

because that believe it or not that is better than

1:25:28

the alternatives presented to them

1:25:30

and

1:25:30

These folks are also an

1:25:33

exploited underclass and

1:25:36

their presence here on the frontier is kind

1:25:38

of a Kind of proof that sort

1:25:40

of the American dream already at this early

1:25:42

stage in like the 1750s is proving

1:25:46

To be nothing more than like magic beans

1:25:50

Well,

1:25:50

that's kind of part of by the design as well,

1:25:52

right? Like the idea that like

1:25:55

You know, you're sending these people out there to

1:25:57

these, you know fringes of territory

1:25:59

that you know we only have the barest

1:26:01

version of control over,

1:26:03

because in the end, if they're successful,

1:26:06

then that is a foothold for the

1:26:08

quote unquote civilized

1:26:11

part of the colonies to come in and then

1:26:13

assert their order over it.

1:26:15

When if it doesn't work out, whatever, at

1:26:17

least none of the people that we actually care about

1:26:20

got hurt in the process. The other

1:26:24

story that Hawkeye lays out is this notion

1:26:26

that to a degree, like all creation is a collective

1:26:38

monument to humanity, that

1:26:41

we are part of this

1:26:44

physical universe and everything we consider

1:26:46

nature. And so as he sort

1:26:48

of puts it, the stars are the monument

1:26:52

the

1:26:55

Cameron's receive and Hawkeye, a

1:26:57

foundling himself, sort of

1:26:59

thoughtfully concludes my parents

1:27:02

too, that for

1:27:05

people like him, you don't

1:27:07

need sanctified church

1:27:12

land or anything like that to lay people to rest. Like

1:27:15

they're always, they're both

1:27:17

not dependent on those forms, but also they are

1:27:19

never gone in that sense. And

1:27:24

then we start to get a little bit, if

1:27:26

there's any doubts that man

1:27:29

is operating in a romantic old

1:27:31

timey mode, we

1:27:33

get Madeline Stowe explaining, yeah,

1:27:36

yes, or if this makes sense. And she

1:27:39

tells him that indeed nothing

1:27:41

has been more stirring to her blood. And

1:27:45

if it weren't for those dastardly French and

1:27:48

her on, they

1:27:50

might've had sex on that Indian battle burial

1:27:53

ground they were hiding in. That's

1:27:56

how moved she was by that speech.

1:28:00

But we do get the arrival of

1:28:02

a pursuing party, looking

1:28:05

for stragglers. They

1:28:07

are saved by the fact that

1:28:10

even here, as Hawkeye has

1:28:12

explained his own view on

1:28:14

how we process mortality,

1:28:17

they are themselves in

1:28:20

another tribe's burial ground where

1:28:22

they have built stands in the trees to

1:28:25

lay their dead. And so again,

1:28:27

you get

1:28:28

these layers of

1:28:31

different traditions intersecting

1:28:33

out here and coming to regard

1:28:36

one another.

1:28:38

I

1:28:40

don't know. When

1:28:42

I was a kid, I always viewed the scene as corny,

1:28:45

a little over rot.

1:28:47

I still might think it is those things, and yet

1:28:50

I think I might also think it's really beautiful. I don't know.

1:28:53

How did this stuff land for you?

1:28:55

I think for me, it's emblematic

1:28:57

of what I said at the top, which

1:28:59

is that I don't really feel like this movie

1:29:02

is like the other man films

1:29:05

and projects that have come before.

1:29:08

And part of that is that he is

1:29:11

giving in, I think, a little bit more

1:29:13

to the grand sweep of the big

1:29:16

Hollywood adventure film in a way that he

1:29:18

has not even really tried to do before.

1:29:21

The closest he got, I think, is something like The Keep, but

1:29:23

even that was sort of like a weirdo horror story

1:29:26

kind of built into a historical

1:29:28

fiction. This is

1:29:31

the kind of movie I associate

1:29:33

more with like an Edward Zwick or something

1:29:36

like that, the kind of person who made their hay just

1:29:38

doing like these big grand sweeping battle

1:29:41

and romance adventure type films to varying degrees

1:29:44

of quality. But

1:29:46

here, I feel like when man is

1:29:48

giving himself over to that style

1:29:51

and that sort of like kind of what the story

1:29:53

demands, it kind of be that way, he's actually

1:29:55

doing it quite well. Like he's acquitting

1:29:58

himself.

1:29:59

But he's not just doing a

1:30:02

riff on all the other

1:30:05

historical action adventure

1:30:07

films like it. It still feels at

1:30:09

its core like there are some manisms

1:30:12

in there.

1:30:13

But like I said, it's stuff

1:30:15

like that scene, I just don't think I

1:30:18

feel like I would see

1:30:20

in anything else he has made up to this

1:30:22

juncture. I think it's really

1:30:26

the fact that you brought in Zwick. In

1:30:29

some regards, this is a last samurai. It

1:30:32

is kind of. Hawkeye

1:30:36

is, I don't

1:30:38

remember the last samurai,

1:30:40

Tom Cruise's character. Tom Cruise guy.

1:30:42

He's the Tom Cruise character who

1:30:45

is better at that Indian shit than the Indians.

1:30:50

Tom Cruise was better at the samurai shit

1:30:52

than the actual samurai.

1:30:55

There is the romance

1:30:58

and the blossoming romance and things like that.

1:31:03

I think

1:31:05

man does manage to kind of elevate

1:31:08

this beyond

1:31:10

the baseness of an adventure

1:31:12

film even though

1:31:15

maybe that's because it doesn't quite realize

1:31:17

that that's what it is.

1:31:20

I think man might be thinking he's doing something

1:31:22

a little bit more elevated than just an

1:31:25

adventure film even though this is surely

1:31:28

a historical adventure film. But

1:31:33

I do think the aspects where he maybe

1:31:35

is trying to apply

1:31:37

some elevated notion to is

1:31:40

what makes it stand out a little bit

1:31:42

more from the usual

1:31:43

kind of Hollywood slop when it comes to this

1:31:45

sort of stuff. It

1:31:50

feels like,

1:31:51

yes, he is making that kind of movie

1:31:54

but he does feel like he is at least trying to make

1:31:56

it his own way. And it does

1:31:58

read in a way.

1:31:59

that feels at least a little bit different

1:32:02

from the average one of those.

1:32:05

Yes. I mean, I don't think it being

1:32:08

like a Hollywood

1:32:09

adventure movie precludes it being

1:32:12

a masterpiece, right? Like, I mean, this is the... I

1:32:14

think this is kind of the weird thing about man

1:32:17

in a lot of ways is that he's a

1:32:21

highly technical like

1:32:23

craftsman who exists in these like really heightened

1:32:25

genre spaces, but also along the way, he

1:32:28

does tend to make films

1:32:31

with some like

1:32:33

sometimes like pretty profound like

1:32:36

meaning, but also sometimes

1:32:40

maybe not even necessarily the meaning he

1:32:42

is intending to bring across or

1:32:44

it is landing differently. And I think that is

1:32:46

that is certainly happening here. Like,

1:32:50

I do think I think fundamentally,

1:32:53

man

1:32:54

is much more convinced that this is a

1:32:56

meticulously researched historical

1:32:59

epic fundamentally

1:33:02

like centering on

1:33:05

fundamentally centering on the action of this film

1:33:10

in which like it is commenting on the

1:33:13

passing of this moment. And I end

1:33:15

up thinking that

1:33:16

when the film is at its strongest, it is actually

1:33:20

much more about the

1:33:22

transience of this moment and

1:33:25

its meaning.

1:33:28

But it is also a meticulously

1:33:30

researched historical epic. And

1:33:32

we get a taste of that next scene, which

1:33:34

is the siege, which

1:33:37

I've seen a million times.

1:33:39

It's still an astonishing

1:33:42

sequence. This is so this is on Twitter.

1:33:46

To my partner, this is

1:33:48

the Rob Tunes,

1:33:50

the surround sound setup

1:33:53

sequence. It has been for a number

1:33:55

of years. Like we move into a new

1:33:57

place. I'm putting on the siege. make

1:34:00

sure because remember the other thing is the soundscape

1:34:02

is really like complicated and it's

1:34:04

really like positional right every

1:34:07

single gun you see fire in this

1:34:10

corresponds to a sound coming from somewhere

1:34:12

else through your speakers and so

1:34:15

this is a scene I watched again and again to make

1:34:17

sure like it just sounds right that I seem

1:34:20

to be surrounded by

1:34:22

my calm siege works which

1:34:26

are incredibly realized here

1:34:28

because again as I sort of said earlier

1:34:30

they built this entire fort and

1:34:33

acres and acres of like

1:34:35

actual siege works can

1:34:38

I can I tell you something very briefly Rob

1:34:40

what because it's important to you understand

1:34:43

how I watch this film in contrast

1:34:45

to how you watch this film yes

1:34:48

I watched it on a $60 projector

1:34:50

for from a

1:34:54

company on Amazon that I do not know

1:34:56

even has any other products and is probably just

1:34:59

a name ascribed to you know a warehouse

1:35:02

full of just crap projectors

1:35:05

it was

1:35:06

it says it's 720p but I

1:35:08

doubt that

1:35:10

with one

1:35:12

quarter watt

1:35:14

I think want to say no no projected from

1:35:20

the corner of my bed lifted up with three

1:35:22

books to angle on the ceiling

1:35:25

above my bed in like the

1:35:27

most intense trapezoid shape

1:35:30

imaginable

1:35:32

that is how I wish I would be not know that

1:35:35

for the first time I love knowing 30

1:35:37

years amazing

1:35:40

truly this podcast contains multitudes

1:35:43

this is fucking

1:35:46

rock still I'm

1:35:50

kind of I'm kind of shaking I'm like do

1:35:53

we get you up here like we

1:35:56

could we just sort this out no like

1:35:58

I got I've got you know my big team actually

1:36:00

if I don't watch it downstairs it would still be on like one

1:36:02

watt TV speakers, but yeah

1:36:06

headphones on for it but

1:36:09

it is I

1:36:12

Don't know it's it like first of all

1:36:14

like it it cranks up

1:36:16

that soundtrack again. It looks

1:36:18

incredible

1:36:21

Troy how do you feel about the siege

1:36:23

warfare? Do you do you feel like liberties

1:36:25

are taken? Do you feel like is this the best

1:36:28

depiction of? very

1:36:31

formal siege

1:36:33

warfare of the of the age of reason

1:36:35

I don't know if The

1:36:38

boss one of the only ah so

1:36:40

it's true. I'm short. Let's get something.

1:36:42

I mean this is a legendary siege Central

1:36:46

it's a very important siege in the war.

1:36:49

It is more calm coming down from Quebec and You

1:36:52

know taking this is kind of a major fourth.

1:36:54

This is a gateway to the West from New York they're

1:36:57

expecting reinforcements from General

1:37:00

Webb the

1:37:01

half whip at Fort Edward

1:37:03

and he's not sending any

1:37:06

We have you know the mortars we have the gunfire

1:37:09

we have you know Colonel Monroe Explaining

1:37:12

how difficult the situation there's they are

1:37:14

so they're digging this trench so many times per

1:37:16

day Here's how far away they are and you know

1:37:19

major. Hey word Duncan's not very bright But

1:37:22

but this is the boy really knows how to do math because

1:37:24

he said oh you have three days that Just

1:37:27

he does the math that nobody needs to do.

1:37:29

It's amazing. He's got not a clue, but you can

1:37:31

do over the intake

1:37:33

And you know this isn't doesn't the long

1:37:36

siege either historically or in this Film

1:37:38

because it's kind of a hopeless situation They

1:37:42

did not expect one calm to come down and

1:37:44

it does not take a lot to take down

1:37:47

a Fort that is undermanned

1:37:50

under armed

1:37:52

If you have as Monroe

1:37:54

says and his guns are bigger than mine And

1:37:56

that's kind of what it comes down to the really

1:37:58

neat thing I think about the siege

1:38:01

is how it ends, where we do have

1:38:03

the parley

1:38:05

between the two generals. It's very much,

1:38:09

you know, late enlightenment, age of reason,

1:38:11

18th century gentlemen armies fighting

1:38:14

it out on, they fight

1:38:17

it out and they talk it out and say, well, here are the

1:38:19

terms, you can go. You

1:38:22

can't hold up here. And

1:38:24

the siege is, the

1:38:26

conclusion of the siege is in many ways more

1:38:28

interesting than the battle itself.

1:38:30

But we do have this whole issue of

1:38:33

how do, how do we get

1:38:35

the daughters in there? How do we sneak them in? So

1:38:37

it's the issue of getting around the pickets and going

1:38:40

at night and surprising Monroe

1:38:42

with his girls. It's like, oh my girls, what

1:38:44

are you doing here? Which is a very, very good

1:38:46

question. So why they didn't

1:38:49

just turn around, but I guess then you

1:38:51

wouldn't have a story. It is, I,

1:38:54

that's the sound is just outstanding

1:38:56

as you know, throughout the film. I

1:38:58

mean, just I didn't, my setup's not as good

1:39:00

as yours, but it is

1:39:03

the, the, just the visuals and

1:39:07

the festival of sounds.

1:39:08

And, you know,

1:39:11

also very importantly, we have

1:39:13

the negotiations in Montgomery's

1:39:15

tent with Magua, who

1:39:18

is kind of a wild card here. It was a wild card

1:39:20

for the French in general. They

1:39:22

have

1:39:23

Magua and his allies, his people,

1:39:26

they have their expectations of

1:39:28

what the siege, how the siege should end. They

1:39:31

want things out of this too. Monroe,

1:39:35

Monroe has, of course, the target

1:39:37

of Magua's personal rage, but,

1:39:41

you know, it's historically the first

1:39:43

nations had their own war customs

1:39:45

and their own war customs required them to

1:39:48

get, you know, a lot of booty and a

1:39:50

lot of prisoners

1:39:52

because they'd been deprived in a siege beforehand

1:39:56

in a previous battle, one common deprived them.

1:39:58

So they have their expectations.

1:39:59

expectations in this in this scene

1:40:02

that modern calm is to deal with and there's kind of a hint

1:40:05

that one comes gonna like look the other way This

1:40:08

is gonna what's up to you is up to you This

1:40:10

is just go ahead. Well, I was gonna say

1:40:12

this is interesting. This is another choice

1:40:15

by man man talks about something commentary

1:40:18

that

1:40:19

You know my calm despite being on the other

1:40:21

side of this war still ends up being sort

1:40:24

of Memorialized as a French

1:40:26

Canadian national hero. Yeah

1:40:28

um You know, there's also there's

1:40:30

also a a a a painting of him dying.

1:40:33

It's it is not as good as the one of wolf Try

1:40:36

Brock wolf wolf But

1:40:40

man makes the argument here that You

1:40:43

know you read some of the like

1:40:46

family one of his aides to camp

1:40:50

Left a really great like narrative of

1:40:53

his time fighting this army on this campaign

1:40:55

and man alludes

1:40:58

to some sources indicating that indeed

1:41:00

Moncalm may have been looking the

1:41:02

other way a little bit at what was going to go down

1:41:06

in the aftermath of the surrender of Fort William

1:41:08

Henry because the

1:41:10

story that Moncalm puts out and

1:41:12

a lot of and become sort of the accepted

1:41:14

version of this is that

1:41:17

the native allies sort of searched forward

1:41:20

and Started undertaking

1:41:23

a massacre and some looting to

1:41:25

the horror and shock of my calm

1:41:29

And here in film pardon

1:41:32

Sacrebleau yeah Well,

1:41:34

and then of course, you know

1:41:36

mccomb

1:41:38

In the wake of this campaign does

1:41:40

sort of recent inclusion that he would rather fight the rest

1:41:42

of this war mostly relying

1:41:44

on his handful of regulars And

1:41:47

militia rather than continue to

1:41:49

rely extensively on the native

1:41:51

troops Which

1:41:54

you know probably a huge miscalculation because

1:41:57

that's the only real source of manpower

1:41:59

that he has

1:41:59

But this ends up being like this

1:42:02

campaign leaves a sour taste in his mouth apparently,

1:42:05

and he does start to move away

1:42:07

from this dependence on native

1:42:10

forces. But

1:42:12

in this rendition,

1:42:14

Macomb is actually much more

1:42:17

in a who will rid me of this troublesome

1:42:19

priest type

1:42:21

mode here with Magua. And

1:42:24

the film sort of has this setup

1:42:27

as

1:42:29

Macomb almost as like

1:42:32

corrupt mafia don in

1:42:34

some way. It's sort of like tacitly

1:42:37

giving permission for a massacre,

1:42:39

but

1:42:41

wanting to make sure that it

1:42:44

can't actually be traced to him.

1:42:48

And so it's a very modern look

1:42:50

at the war because the terms are, oh,

1:42:53

they go on parole. You can't fight for a while.

1:42:55

This is your time out. Like you're playing a game

1:42:58

as a kid and time out. You have to stay in your home

1:43:00

base for like five minutes and then you come out and you

1:43:02

can fight again, which of course is the

1:43:04

way 18th century parole has worked. But

1:43:06

it's kind of ridiculous if you think about it.

1:43:09

Well, and Macomb is probably rightfully

1:43:11

skeptical at these things. Even back then,

1:43:14

these things are not always observed. These

1:43:17

term, eventually a lot of guys who do end

1:43:19

up getting parole do work their way back to

1:43:22

fighting in the theater of operations.

1:43:24

And Macomb, who desperately needs to like

1:43:27

stem the tide of incoming Brits, you

1:43:30

could sort of see being desperate enough to,

1:43:34

it sure would be a shame an entire regiment

1:43:36

and a cable commander don't

1:43:39

make it out of this. But this is the move that

1:43:41

man makes. And

1:43:43

this is sort of like on both

1:43:45

sides here, we have these

1:43:48

icons of what appear to be like Western martial

1:43:50

virtue. And in each case, these

1:43:53

proved to be hollow facades. You know,

1:43:55

when Colonel Monroe hears about the

1:43:57

massacre. Immediately,

1:44:00

you see sort of shoot across his

1:44:02

face the recognition that like, oh,

1:44:05

if the Huron are attacking

1:44:08

up and down the frontier, I'm

1:44:11

going to lose my militia. He knows exactly what that

1:44:13

update means.

1:44:15

And immediately without a second thought,

1:44:18

decides to wheeze a lot of the commitments that

1:44:20

Webb made to the colonial militia.

1:44:24

And

1:44:25

Duncan, when sort of pressed

1:44:27

on this point,

1:44:30

also then

1:44:31

lies about what he saw and backs

1:44:33

Monroe's play. And so,

1:44:36

you know,

1:44:37

by the end of the film, you could certainly

1:44:40

say that Monroe was a skilled commander and

1:44:42

a physically brave one, but

1:44:45

certainly ruthless

1:44:48

and like morally a bit bankrupt.

1:44:51

When we hear the story of like his relationship with Magua,

1:44:54

it's easy to believe that he would be that kind

1:44:56

of man. Um, likewise,

1:44:59

my calm

1:45:01

boy, the sea in the French camp.

1:45:03

Uh,

1:45:06

I never understood because I didn't

1:45:08

know that much about my colonial history here. I

1:45:11

figured it was just

1:45:12

a depiction of like the English

1:45:15

do war like this. Meanwhile, the French

1:45:17

bring a children's choir with them. I

1:45:20

didn't realize that, no,

1:45:22

that is a local cat. That is a frontier

1:45:25

priest bringing his

1:45:27

native students to my calm to

1:45:29

show what good little French Catholics

1:45:32

he's creating by teaching them

1:45:34

to sing like hymns to my calm

1:45:36

in his tent. But it's such a striking.

1:45:38

It is such a striking moment. It gives

1:45:40

you such whiplash, but also gives you a sense of

1:45:42

like the difference in approaches

1:45:45

to colonization and also a different

1:45:47

style that like when

1:45:49

calm is projecting as he

1:45:51

is making these rounds and sort of

1:45:55

accepting all these offerings and markers

1:45:57

of respect,

1:45:59

being offered.

1:45:59

by these tribes in the middle of waging

1:46:02

this high-speed campaign?

1:46:05

It does a small little moment, but it

1:46:07

does reflect a real serious,

1:46:10

which would be a long-term problem for

1:46:12

the First Nations that allied

1:46:15

with the French, not simply because

1:46:18

of the erasure of their culture, which would carry

1:46:20

on through the presidents of

1:46:22

schools in Canada well up into the late 20th

1:46:24

century. But the

1:46:26

Huron

1:46:27

were chased out of their

1:46:30

ancestral lands by

1:46:32

the Iroquois

1:46:33

because the French would not sell them guns

1:46:36

unless they convert it.

1:46:37

It was an important part of the French alliance that they,

1:46:40

you have to go to the Catholics, then

1:46:42

they'll sell you guns. The Dutch and English

1:46:44

traders had no such compunctions,

1:46:47

so the Hanusani and the Mohawk in

1:46:49

the Seneca would get rifles, and

1:46:52

they would chase the Huron out

1:46:54

of their historic lands. Many of them ended up sitting in

1:46:56

the satellite in New York, some out in Ohio,

1:46:58

some in Michigan, but many of their Great

1:47:01

Lakes lands were chased out because

1:47:03

of the French insistence that

1:47:05

Catholicism be a big part of their

1:47:07

life. So

1:47:09

the Catholic influence on the

1:47:12

French alliances and the importance of, you

1:47:15

know, here's the civilization we're

1:47:17

bringing. So as we're bringing, bringing is the church,

1:47:20

not just disease and for

1:47:22

traders, we bring Catholicism

1:47:24

with us. And it's such a small little moment, but

1:47:27

it really does kind