Black Robe Book Vs Movie Essay

Words: 1072
Pages: 5

Through our readings for the class and watching the films on Wednesday nights, I am able to see how history is portrayed in film versus what you gain from books. To expand on this point, I plan to look at each film we watched and give examples.
The first film we watched as a class was titled Black Robe. The movie looks back at a priest attempting to make his way from a western colony along the eastern shores of North America into a religious outpost deep within Indian territory. The premise of the movie is nothing that a book could not deliver. The value of history as a cinematic genre comes in the details we can see from watching. The movie portrays the power of the written language. The priest writes a message and has the western young man read the message. This simple action amazed the Indians. The movie also shows us the differences between the western world and the native world’s views on dreams. The main Indian character repeatedly saw his death. Once he reached the location of his vision, he remained and accepted his death. The next movie we watched was Ride With the Devil. The movie takes place on the outskirts of the Civil War. It avoids the large formational movies that portray the war as a face to face battle. Instead it follows a band of characters that fight the war on the frontier locations. The movie broke
…show more content…
The movie shows a family making its way westward to find work. One of the things that the movie showed me as a viewer is something we talked about in class. It showed that even the poorest of American families still had a vehicle to get around. This is what lead to the movie being banned within the Soviet Union. The movie also paints the government in a good light. The family went through tough placement work camps until it found the government run camp. At the camp we seethe children amazed by the running water and indoor toilets that flush. This is something we take for granted