NATIVE AMERICANS?: 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE; THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, THUNDERHEART
When Chris Rock first burst on the scene in the late 80's as a stand-up, one of his jokes was how the lower a minority's standing in society was, the better they'd be at fighting whoever was above them, and he illustrated this with the line, "For every Puerto Rican there's an American Indian who can kick his a**." Funny as this is, it demonstrates how few, if any, cultures have had it as bad in the United States as native Americans. Ridley Scott's 1492:C0NQUEST OF PARADISE and Michael Mann's THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS deal with this from an historical perspective, while Michael Apted's THUNDERHEART tries to deal with the problem from a more contemporary angle.
Throughout history, Christopher Columbus has been perceived in a variety of ways. First, he was the bumbler who thought he had found a new passage to the East, but instead found a land that, while offering many pleasures, did not offer the riches of the East. Later, he became the visionary who discovered the New World, and, as far as most were concerned, America. But in recent years, several have questioned Columbus' intentions towards native Americans, whether he was a racist who saw the Indians as inferiors to be conquered and slave, or, at best, if he merely was the stepping stone for what was to follow. Scott and writer Roselyne Bosch try to argue the latter, especially by showing Columbus being respectful and even curious about the culture, but they do so within the context of a muddled narrative.
For starters, the film is 2 1/1 hours, and feels it. For another, it's yet another case where the dialogue sounds like it was written in history books, rather than for the screen. And there's really no shape to the narrative, as scenes just go from one to another without any real connection. It's conceivably interesting the behind-the-scenes wheedling that eventually allowed Columbus (Gerard Depardieu) to sail for what became the New World, but the film gets bogged down instead of making that exciting. And it's still confusing when Columbus, at the behest of Queen Isabella (Sigourney Weaver), returns to the West Indies to govern. You end up not caring how much is based on fact and how much was invented for the movie, because it all becomes incomprehensible. And as for the Indians, while Scott doesn't demonize them, he makes them noble savages, rather than real characters. Certainly, the movie looks beautiful, especially when Columbus first sights the New World, but it's dramatically empty.
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