Black Robe

REVIEW
Beresford's impassioned examination of the cruelty and oppression intentionally and unintentionally imposed by the European settlers as they brought their "civilization" and Christian beliefs to the native peoples of the New World. While the story breaks little new ground, Black Robe is saved from familiarity by its strikingly beautiful Canadian landscapes and its absorbing and emotional drama of faith and the will to survive. Bluteau plays a 17th-century French Jesuit missionary whose religious zeal compels him to risk martyrdom in order to bring Catholicism to the Hurons of Canada. Along with a native chief, his daughter and a young French settler, he embarks on a harrowing journey up the St. Lawrence River -- a symbolic canoe ride that begins in an explosively colorful autumn and ends during a torturously inhospitable winter.