LDR: Last of the Mohicans
FAC_J...@jmuvax.bitnet
When I saw this film in the local quad, sitting as close as I used
to as a child but with eyes that can't quite sustain the same level
of pressure for long--I was thrilled and confused. Not sure I was
able to sort it and pin it, but wanting another dunk in that
experience again. Now the disc has arrived, and mercifully I'm
obliged to watch the film in video from a a respectable distance.
But on second viewing its experience is still thrilling and a
little clearer.
Michael Mann's freely reworked version of Fenimore Cooper's novel
has gotten bum-rapped at times, and even praised like a Chinese
meal that's an empty spot by the time Oscar's at the door. Despite
this, I can't think of a better notable commercial success that
should have displaced A Few Good Men in the Academy's annual
shenanigans.
Must be because Mohicans as a book was just the rapid-fire
adventure among Cooper's Leatherstocking saga, and as the author
himself put it too shocking for ladies, too realistic for timid
males, and insufficiently moral for clergyman. The edge has worn
off at least the first two--and what would you expect, beyond
simply restoring that edge, of the filmmaker who's milked the
trends of Vice and too often decks them in dreams of Tangerine?
Not much, in conventional wisdom.
But Mann is definitely a skillful and intelligent filmmaker.
Mohicans shows the same cinematic sense that's really behind any
arguably lamentable trendiness of his earlier successes on film and
in TV. And that sense is only superficially trendy, even for
viewers desparate to see it in judgment here. In Henry Sheehan's
badmouthing Sight & Sound review of Mann's hamfisted cinematic
choices in the film, he targets visuals where "the heros don't look
like men scaling a wilderness so much as mice scurrying through
fields." Right on--but that's one prime VIRTUE of the film. That
sense.
There's enormous distinction, for example, in the way Mann handles
not only the big fort battle scene but that first attack on the
unsuspecting British column escorting the ladies. He keeps the
viewer constantly half in and half out of orientation--in a clarity
of confusion. While there's often in the film a mix of researched
historical detail and earnest historical speculation (what was a
likely fighting style, given such weapons of the period?), with
well-nigh implausibilities of action (Hawkeye's deadly marksmanship
with a brace of flintlocks on the run, no less), the overall thrust
of detail is toward impressionism--not historical exposition--
experience--not critical intellection. "It only works," to quote
Mann in an interview, "when what things mean and the way they feel
are operating in total harmony."
For my money, this happens often enough in his Mohicans. It's hard
to recall a historical period film with the same balance of the
archaic (out of Cooper) and the modern (out of us), in behavior and
dialog--to hybrid effect. Nor with the sense of familiarity and
yet threat in the natural environment (and its Red "aliens" to the
British). Hawkeye's been raised to maneuver as one with his world,
but it's vast and engulfing too; and we're also with the British
and their ladies, for whom the engulfing is almost all there is.
And to this viewer, the characters hardly ever seem to be wearing
costumes in any sense literal or figurative.
Certainly, there are nits one could pick. Cooper's anti-social
isolate hero has become almost frontier debonair, and there's
always the hovering spirit of liberal indulgence and guilt in
viewing the Red Man. But I think such things are nits arguable at
best and relatively minor. What's great about Mann's Mohicans is
that it's more film than book--and I don't mean well-filmed novel--
and therefore insists on no plodding subtextual argument, nor
wallows in that liberal daydream close to the surface, a la a
Dances With Wolves. It's a film of images and sounds foremost,
which are experience first but often elusively shifting in
connotative resonance. There'll be no race-culture marriage here.
Hawkeye is Indian-raised, but will never be utterly Red. He gets
the British white woman, unlike Uncas, who can't have Alice (nor
her, him)--two cultures that can only die for one another. But
even as Hawkeye, who can "pass," gets a woman able to liberate...
you know the trio, with Chingachgook, is doomed. Still, it hasn't
the same overly melancholy insistence of Wolves' conclusion; and
anyway, as D. H. Lawrence pointed out in the case of the original
Cooper, even if it's a (reworked liberal) mythology, "wish-
fulfillment" stuff, it's "deep subjective desire," "real" and
"prophetic" in its way, and can be honorably useful. --Why not, if
this stuff can thrill romantically yet remain disturbing? Mark my
words, however you feel: this film may be a classic in the making.
I've no doubt at all it has legs.
But enough musing on a second viewing, and on to the disc. Last of
the Mohicans is a widescreen film and has been released by Fox in
true proportions, maybe 2.35:1. What disc viewers can be *most*
thankful for, though, is that this is a very good transfer. Those
intense reds on British uniforms aren't quite as stable as a state-
of-the-art transfer can achieve (see what wonders Criterion has
done recently with Baron Munchausen for that), and they and similar
bright hues at some moments seem to bleed just a bit beyond their
intended boundaries--but these are very acceptable quibbles.
There're also some dreadfully difficult lighting situations in
Mohicans--take the natural light cavish interiors of those frontier
buildings, and especially the misty murk at the waterfall hideout--
but the video transfer does passably well even in these moments.
The surround sound is no slouch either. It does full justice not
only to the modally oriented music score, but also provides real
bottom-end punch to the cannon, which pound away as vigorously as
they flash onscreen....
Gee--I want to go home and watch this film again. Real soon.