This is the third in Rev. Malone’s article series looking at films featuring various aspects of the Catholic church, investigating particularly the authenticity of their protrayals of Catholicism. The first installment focused on Of Gods and Men and the second on Brighton Rock.
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Black Robe is set in French Canada in the winter of 1634. Beautifully photographed in authentic locations (at the same season as the action of the movie), it immerses its audience in the period. There are the Canadian forts, the icy rivers and the snow-clad mountains, the remote forests. Indian villages and forts were constructed for the movie. (There are also some brief flashbacks to the cathedrals and salons of France of the 1630s.)
It is a story of the Jesuit missions and the Algonquin, Huron and Iroquois tribes. The focus is narrow, on one Jesuit, Fr Laforgue (Lothaire Bluteau) and his journey up-river with a group of Algonquins, their capture and torture by the Iroquois, their escape and his reaching a remote Huron village which was to be his mission.
Brian Moore (who has given readers insights into Irish Catholicism with his novels and their movie versions – Catholic, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne) based his novel on the Relations, the correspondence of the Jesuits with their superiors in France. The movie, especially with its portrayal of the hardships of the terrain and travel, the isolation and deprivations (even for ascetical missionaries), the cruel torture, offers us sights and insights into the lives and deaths of the missionaries.
Fr Laforgue is a stern man. We see brief flashbacks which indicate his motives for joining the Jesuits: serving the Mass of a missionary whose ear has been cut off and the side of whose face has been deformed, but who wants to go back, even to death, to preach to the savages; a touch of humanity as he listens to a recorder recital by an attractive young lady that his mother wants him to marry; the farewell to his mother and the expectation that he will never see her again.
The Jesuit spirituality of the movie is that of the will and the intellect. The missionaries have a strong theology: outside the church and baptism there is no salvation – hence the extreme necessity to baptise at all cost; that Jesus is the only saviour and that Indian religious beliefs are pagan superstition as is their belief in truth being given in the world of dreams – the Jesuits dispute dreams and their capacity for revelation and are realists about the present world; that the truth should be enough to motivate the Indians to believe in Christianity. They exercise a strong will, even to expecting death for their work. They speak the language of Christ’s love but it is not seen as a strong motivation. Fr Laforgue will have to journey from truth to love.
The Indians are portrayed sympathetically. Colonial condescension is avoided. So, the Indians are not portrayed as romantic noble savages either. (Authentic languages are used and sub-titles provided.) The movie shows us, in some detail, the daily customs of the Indians: canoing, hunting and cooking, camping. Their natural sexual behaviour is also glimpsed (and not commented on by Fr Laforgue). Their life is full. They are in harmony with their land. Why should it change?
The screenplay offers constant parallels between the religion of the Indians and Christianity. And each religion has a similar effect on the other – it is seen as hostile, superstitious and destructive. The Indians worship God, but express themselves in the language of spirits and dreams. The Algonquin chief continually dreams and is guided by the dreams, especially in the details and manner of his death and in his advice for the black robe to finish his journey alone. For Fr Laforgue, the dreams are fantasies. This world is the real one.
Yet, his preaching is continually focussing on the other world, the next world, the paradise where all we will need is God, a not very interesting world for the Indians who would like their wives and their style of life as part of paradise. The comparison of entry into the next world is made as the Manitou appears and takes the Chief with her. The priests await death, their likeness to Christ in his sufferings (with the image of the Cross).
The comparison is offered very clearly with the character of Mestigoit, the medicine man. Just as the black-robed, celibate priest is seen as strange, so the dwarfed, painted religious leader is seen as strange. Both see each other as diabolical. Mestigoit tells the Indians that the priest is a demon. Laforge would see Mestigoit as a demon. In the destruction of the religious traditions, each is a demon to the other. Mestigoit fears the baptismal ritual and the sign of the Cross. The priest is stealing the spirit of the baptised.
The earnest, unsmiling, moralising priest who goes on his journey of faith in an intensely intellectual way, whose commitment is absolutely true, though not strongly felt in the heart, is transformed by his being with the Indians. But he is transformed by sharing torture and pain with them.
Fr Laforgue does not change his views that the Indians are savages who need the civilising as well as the saving grace of Christianity. He is always the Frenchman. He does relent of his harsh judging of the Indians according to pragmatic criteria and allows them the reward of tobacco for their work. And we glimpse him playing the recorder, obviously a gift from the young woman back in France. But, even though the Algonquin turn against him and abandon him in the forest, he comes to their defence when they are attacked by the Iroquois. He does not realise how much he has come to respect them. He also becomes more tolerant. He appreciates more the strength of his own sexual struggle as well as his celibate commitment.
The spiritual journey for Fr Laforgue serves as an allegory of the changes in outlook in Catholicism of more recent decades. Respect for cultures and the ‘inculturation’ of Christianity are now part of the Catholic ethos. It is no longer right to go into a people of different faith with an attitude of spiritual colonialism and a demand for instant conversion to the truth and the renunciation of past heritage. Those mistakes have been made and the dire consequences of oppressed peoples rising up can be seen all around the world. When we see missionaries who still presume on these old styles – as do many fundamentalist groups – we recognise that ‘truth’ dominates respect and love.
Black Robe gives us a historically useful glimpse of part of the Counter-Reformation missionary activity of the Catholic Church as well as offering a contemporary critique of the missions.
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Rev. Peter Malone (MSC) has reviewed films for the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting and served as President of SIGNIS, an organization of media professionals in the global Roman Catholic church.
