Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Movie
Review: The movie was immersed in historical accuracy, from the clothing, cultures, and attitudes. The "Black Robes" were trying to convert the 'savages' to find paradise to which they did not seek, they had their own religion and their own paradise to look forward to, where their loved ones would be. The black robes were also their to help the French colonize the area, making it safe for others to come over if they all had found the same religion, they could be safe. The Movie showed how the Indians tried to syncronize catholicism with their own culture and how the Black Robe had gained an insight to their understanding and had compassion for them, with a love for them without trying to exploit them as ignorant savages. The movie takes you from Champlain to Huron and the trial and tribulations of the 17th Century. An easy movie to watch and gain valuable insight without too much westernization as possible.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Movie
Review: The movie was immersed in historical accuracy, from the clothing, cultures, and attitudes. The "Black Robes" were trying to convert the 'savages' to find paradise to which they did not seek, they had their own religion and their own paradise to look forward to, where their loved ones would be. The black robes were also their to help the French colonize the area, making it safe for others to come over if they all had found the same religion, they could be safe. The Movie showed how the Indians tried to syncronize catholicism with their own culture and how the Black Robe had gained an insight to their understanding and had compassion for them, with a love for them without trying to exploit them as ignorant savages. The movie takes you from Champlain to Huron and the trial and tribulations of the 17th Century. An easy movie to watch and gain valuable insight without too much westernization as possible.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent in Every Way
Review: This film is so unHollywood that it is refreshing and moving. It is superbly acted and directed. The sets and costumes are so authentic that the viewer is drawn into the characters' lives immediately. This film is a winner. If you want authentic Indians and real struggles at the time, this is the film. Its documentary-like quality adds even more realism. I loved this film.
Rating:
Summary: Cultures collide in a beautiful film
Review: This film, by the very talented Bruce Beresford, should have won the Academy Award. It has great acting, exquisite scenery, a haunting sound track, and thought provoking story. To my knowledge, it is the best film to show effectively the collision of native American and European cultures or, for that matter, to depict any cross culural misunderstanding. There is some gratuitous violence. Yet the overall impact of the film is not diminished. The film depicts a French missionary seeking to convert suspicious native Americans, whose world views are indeed a continent away. So, why does Leonard Maltin call this film "flawed"? Ignore his review and see this film!
Rating: 
Summary: Supremely ambitious film that fails in many areas
Review: This is a supremely ambitious film that fails in many areas, mainly because it tries to do too much. Bruce Beresford signed this film and one wonders how much its shortcomings are due to his lack of knowledge, if not understanding, of the subject matter. Ostensibly a film about Europeans opening up the New World, the story focuses on the journey of a young, Jesuit priest, Father Laforgue, as he travels upriver by canoe in search of new Indian tribes to convert. This is a difficult enough story for a filmmaker, since the real life events must have included long periods of watery boredom. Beresford naturally concentrates upon the main drama, which takes place between the human players. The plot manages to get snagged between the two worlds, real and fictitious, giving the movie a poor sense of continuity, which serves to undermine many of the scenes. For the most part, the movie is simply unbelievable. The main term used by the Europeans in the film, when referring to Indians, is "savages," and the portrayal of their culture which follows, reinforces that description. A lone voice in the film, that of Father Laforgue's French travelling companion, argues a plaintive case for the integrity of Indian culture. That is one of the problems of the film as a whole, that a theme, once introduced, is as quickly forgotten and not developed any further. On matters cultural, the film has little to say, in spite of each of the main characters being given their chance to do so. Now, leaving aside what might have been achieved, let me say a word in the film's favour. Cinematographically, the film is astounding. Obviously this is not a plus when being viewed on the small screen. However, the camera work is exciting and the images of 16th century Canada are well worth seeing. In addition, the scenes in the Iroquois village in the middle of the film are quite fascinating. One fervently hopes that the research done to produce them was profound. They are rich and exotic and hint at a degree of social development far beyond what is otherwise suggested by the film's action. It should be stated that there is a certain amount of realistic and savage violence on the screen for short moments, which is not for the faint of heart. Altogether, the film is hardly the success one hoped for. Yet it is an attempt at least, to consider this distant corner of Canadian history and, in the telling, it is not altogether one-sided.
Rating:
Summary: A balanced view of a complex subject.
Review: This is a very moving film about the clash of two radically different cultures. The young Jesuit priest, Father LaForgue, although very rigid in his belief system, sincerely wants to help the Native Americans by bringing them the Truth. But his message of paradise has no meaning for the Alogonquins, Hurons, and other tribes that he comes into contact with. They cannot understand why he has no woman. They fear him as a demon because he reads from books and makes strange signs (of the cross). He, in turn, believes they are living in darkness and must be saved. He is fearful of the vast forests where the devil reigns. There is a great deal of complexity in the character of Chomina, the Algonquin leader who fears the Black Robe but who feels honor bound to assist him. Father LaForgue is a tragic figure, so lonely and confused in the vast expanses of 'New France'. Why is he here, so far from his mother's comfortable drawing rooms? What does he hope to accomplish? The film is beautifully shot on location. A warning to the faint-hearted: there are some gruesome scenes in the film. Black Robe is a moving, balanced film with a profound spirituality.
Rating:
Summary: Like being there!
Review: This is so real, it is as close as you can come to really being there at a very interesting moment in history. This video will give the viewer a real appreciation for conditions at that time and the kind of bravery it took to settle a new land. Very fine acting! First seen on VHS.
Rating:
Summary: Mysterious film does not use all its resources
Review: This movie was actually a little too powerful for my taste...the characters seemed flat and forced me to look directly at the events, which are a bit intense. The actors, despite their excellent work, weren't given much to do. Father Laforgue only looked helpless and lost throughout the film. Also, Aden Young in the role of Daniel, Laforgue's young companion who falls in love with a Native woman, is an absolutely breathtaking male, completely beautiful. His performance is very quiet and honest, and the character was interesting, but the story was allowed to mask the people. But that story is excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: Neo-Colonial Propaganda at its best
Review: To begin with, I think this film is a true cineastic masterpiece. From its hauntingly beautiful score through the breathtaking landscape shots to the meticulous detail observed with any buildings, item of clothing and other equipment down to the last little piece of Native jewellery used, this film let's you immerse you into a powerful image of 17th century eastern Canada "as it really was". The film is at its best when it illustrates mutual misunderstandings in the encounter of two completely different cultures. The clash of cultures is often illustrated by sharp cuts between Native and European worlds. These are always interesting, sometimes quite amusing. Often they amount to sheer propaganda of "savagery" vs. "civilisation". Indians huddle together, fart and copulate in dark, dirty and stinking wigwams while Europeans walk across beautiful Old World city squares conspiciously devoid of beggars, cripples and the omipresent garbage and sewage of the time. Indians practice primitive shamanism in forests while Europeans stride through light-flooded cathedrals and vow to relinquish the amenities of western Civilisation to salvage the infidels (even if "they" already cut off one of your ears in the process). Europeans do well-mannered house music in aristocratic mansions. Indians do it like dogs in the dirt. Always, anywhere and with anyone, as the film will teach us through relentless repetition. The clash of belief systems is personalised in an encounter of the dignified Jesuit priest with an Indian shaman - impersonalised by a ridiculously behaving and profoundly vicious yellow painted dwarf. What could have been an interesting example of Indian attitudes towards disabled and retarded people - worshipping people who are different as a manifestation of the divine instead of confining them to the margins of society - is turned into just another example of the film's leitmotif - the savagery of the barbaric Indian. When the film was released a New York Times critic lauded the fact that this historical film got by with portraying American colonial history"without villains". Without white villains that is, of course. Set in a time when every City Hall inquisition room in the Christian west was equipped with arsenals of torture tools beyond the imagination of any Indian, when the Thirty Years War was raging through central Europe where entire populations of large cities were butchered to the last woman and infant while seeking refuge in churches and when one third of Germany's population was slaughtered by armies of fellow Christians, the film centers entirely on what it presents as a realistic portray of "Indian savagery". When the Algonquin party with its European guests is captured by Iroquoians (the Algonquians speak neither Algonquian nor do the Iroquois speak Iroquoian but all happen to speak Cree here in fact but who would notice anyway) the male captives are forced to run the gauntlet in their captor's village. Once, badly battered, of course, they had survived this indeed pretty brutal initiation procedure, I , having at least a superficial knowledge of Iroquois culture, prepared myself for wittnessing the usual next step, the adoption of all captives into the tribe. I soon learned that the makers of the film seemed to have an agenda which would not permit such a less than traumatic ending. It is towards the end that an ambitious yet heavily slanted portrayal of culture clash tilts into point-blank atrocity propaganda. Portraying matriarchic Iroqois societiy with its democratic decision making processes as a male-commandeered dictatorship is in itself a surprising failure given Beresford's claim to show everything "the way it really was". One wonders if this distortive rendering of Iroquois social life occurred unintentionally. How could they get such basic things so wrong? However, this appears like a lesser evil compared to the what we are supposed to learn of the treatment of captives by Iroqois. Captured women and children were regularly adopted into the tribe. In fact the Iroqois waged numerous wars on neighbours and absorbed their vanquished foes through something that amounted to genocide by hostile takeover, if you like. There was a time when 25,000 out of 35,000 Iroquois were adopted former enemies. The biggest indian killers of the time were disease, not war. Tribes replenished their thinned-out ranks with captured enemies and could hardly afford to kill them "unnecessarily". Male captives were in for a tougher ride and were only adopted after having endured the gauntlet. The film shows none of this. Instead, the captured boy has his throat cut before his father's eyes for no apparent reason - exept "Indian savagery" which is, by definition, beyond any rationality. The captured woman is announced to be tortured to death the next day. The same fate awaits the male captives - although they just passed the initiation rite. One previous commentator hoped that the research done for the scenes in the Iroquois village was profound. Well, it was not. In fact, the makers of the film got everything beyond mere outfits wrong here. This is certainly not "a sensitive and earnest portrayal of Indians" as one previous reviewer reasoned. At the end the film raises "the profound question" if it was right to bring the light of Christianity to the Hurons since they were later on "annihilated" by their heathen Iroquois enemies (in reality parts of the survivors were adopted into the tribe, others formed the influental Wiandot nation). What the film fails to mention is that it was hardly a Christian "turn the other cheek" attitude that brought about the demise of the Hurons but the fact that only partial conversion of the Hurons occurred which split the disease-stricken nation at a time of war when unity was most needed and that the French had chosen the Hurons as their allies and prime proxy fighters in the "Beaver Wars" against their Iroquois enemies - and finally let them down militarily when the Hurons needed their support (For some reading check out http://www.tolatsga.org/hur.html). How to rate such a film? Five stars for its technical merits. One star for its often distortive, elaborate defamation of Native cultures. I think that the latter weighs more heavily than the former. Two stars. See it. Carefully. I rented it. I wouldn't buy it.
Rating:
Summary: A film to study and treasure
Review: Twenty years from now, film students will continue to appreciate the skill by which Bruce Beresford and his team realized Brian More's novel on the physical and spitual manisfestations of man and environment. I bought the VHS as soon as it was available and have analyzed portions of the film shot by shot, marveling at the almost symphonic mastery of theme and structure. Now I enjoy the DVD regularly and am constantly loaning it to friends.
I would commend three scenes as indicators of the more subtle qualities of this film: (1) The scene where priest Black Robe flagellates himself when he finds himself becoming excited watching others having sex. Note that he does this under a bent spruce about to fall into the river, a symbol of abnormality (compared to other "trees"). (2) The handling of the sun--the Native Americans' source of spirituality and life--as Chief Chomina at last approaches the island of his visions. The whole sequence on and off the island (remeniscent of a famous Boecklin painting) is exquisitely structured. (3) The deliberately ambiguous ending, the cross in front of the sun. Is it bringing light to the world, or blotting it out?
One final note. Parts of the film were photographed in an estuarial portion of the Saguenay near the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 100s of miles from the supposed route to Lake Ontario. The mountains are too high, but appropriately stunning, and the tidal fluctuations are apparent on shore from time to time.
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