LA Weekly from Los Angeles, California • 37

lawlieye and Hot Lips Michael Mann's romance with history progresses, until shes shooting at Hurons and braving waterfalls. Studi teases out myriad shades of illainv ft om the paradoxical charactei of Magna, the treacherous Union guide; at first glance the stock bloodthirsty native, Magna reveals good leason lor unleashing a particulaily vicious revenge on a British officers family. But as the Huron chief points out, Maguas understandable rage does a disservice to his tribe his methods reek of the unnecessary violence and loose-cannon arrogance of the imperialists. The conflicts play themselves out during the long, trancelike ending sequence, in which the few remaining characters, including Coras younger sister (Jodhi May, who says volumes with her imploring eyes and the brave set of her mouth) and Hawkeyes Indian brother, march silently across a cliff edge, pausing to engage in the last tragic conflicts. This coda floats from the preceding series of startling, hyperkinetic battles like a sleeper waking from a dream, unable to make sense of the night.

Its Manns most masterful passage; he sustains the scenes hushed grandeur as securely as Sam Peckinpah did the train-robbery sequence in The Wild Bunch. As May fixes Studi with her unrelenting mournful stare, the body of her lover dashed on the rocks below, the worthiness of generals and cannons and trapping rights vanishes. Both the imperialists and the Native American tribes have been Fighting for something theyve already lost. Hawkeye and Chingachgook, who always knew this, can only stand by and watch those they love die for nothing. Day-Lewis has been giving interviews exalting the notion of living intensely, and for audiences up to heie with overstuffed, oveipaid actors vaunting their intensity', his performance here comes as nothing less than a shock to the system.

However self-indulgent his arduous training for the role, it has given the role of Hawkeye a depth and poise rarely seen in period spectacles, no matter how Method the actor. Day-Lewis moves and stands and speaks like a man who can reload and fire a flintlock at a full run (as Mann claims he can); hes controlled and rivetingly confident. His is a kind of hero long awaited by female moviegoers, this one at least sensual, instinctive, untroubled by the wearisome psychologies of the piteous male pro- litical revision titan any other direc-tor in the world. He takes a schoolbov's glee in plaving out ang-sty macho fantasies set in wot Ids tailored for stylish tough talk. His movies Thiej Manhunter) and television projects Miami Vice, Crime Story) are the woik of a shallow thug at once painfully aesthetized and bullying.

Yet the peculiarities that make vintage Mann so annoying when hes pumping his glossy balloons with hoodlum hot air ironically work in The Last of the Mohicans favor. As an amoral and anti-political period piece, deeply invested in the futility of war, the movies brute splendor is all the more moving because its so extravagantly doomed. In his retelling of the French and Indian War, Mann has excised the sentimentality and cloak-and-dagger antics of James Fenimore Coopers book. While the French and English wrestle for dominance over the colonies, Indians and colonials who want no part of being dominated are asked to choose sides. Such edgy accords give rise to complex relationships: the feisty colonials itch to break from the British, while a Huron guide (Wes Studi) turns traitorous.

The Film focuses on the core of the British forces led by the intelligent but fatuous officer Duncan (Edward ZTs wonderful Steven Wad-dington), whos towing the generals daughter, Cora Munro (Madeleine Stowe), across battle lines to her fathers fort. In the process, he loses her to Hawkeye (Daniel Day-Lewis), the white man raised from infanthood by Mohawk leader Chingachgook (Indian activist Russell Means, profoundly affecting in his first acting role). The story unfolds primarily through a series of bloody skirmishes, but Mann never lunges for thrills with graphic gore. Even in the tumult of battle, we never see a weapon intercept a body (although the sound effects are terrifying, and a number of swift, matter-of-fact scalpings rush by in an instant). More effective than any amount of fake blood are the Hurons war whoops echoing through the forest while their English prey stand, baffled, awaiting execution.

Mohicans' battles achieve their ferocious powei through hypnotic silences, vivid camera work, and an admirable lac of didacticism. As personified by the neuUal Hawkeye, Mohicans emphasizes the wais pointlessness: both sides ate so compromised and theii goals so foul that 0111 chief emotional investment is not in who wins but how stylishly they can lose. The battles, whether triumphant 01 tragic, simply trudge inexorably toward inconsequence, and all thats left to care about ai nature and love, which may or (more likely) may not have been Manns point. In his handling of human relations, lies achieved a foi mal and gentlemanly remoteness; this movie is so profoundly of its pei iod that the climactic love scene, a mere kiss, feels swooningly romantic. Mann isnt known for his interest in sociological truth, but Mohicans captures its historical moment the dissolution oflndian tribes that played by the settlers rules and lost, and the stirrings of Revolutionary fervor and female emancipation.

Stowe makes of lovely and limpid Cora a believable proto-feminist; her scenes open while shes rejecting Duncans marriage proposal, and her will strengthens as the film Mi? Seizing the Day BY ARION BERGER FILM PICS ARE A TOUGH SELL FOR AMERICANS, AND -g Revolutionary epics (the French and In- dian War depicted in The Last of the Mohicans took place about 20 years prior) are nearly impossible to make palatable for a conservative public whod rather remember the Founding Fathers neat job of legalizing all this bloodshed than the temperamental colonials who picked the fight with Britain in the First place. At the center of any epic is a hero, a character whose nature Hollywood now Finds extremely problematic. How does a white, male director create a hero with whom he and his supposed public can identify in these ethnically sensitive times? Up until now, the answer has been a string of invincible white guv for children (Harrison Ford), wisecracking antiheioes whose attitudes deflate their heroism while their actions endorse it (Bruce Willis), or characteis who arent human at all (Schwarzenegger). Tougher still, a hero needs an enemy to conquer, and weve had to become very careful in choosing our enemies. In Dances With Wolves, the enemy is us.

Kevin Costner took it upon himself to apologize for wiping out Native Americans, while distancing his own character from the actual wiping. Dances had little to do with Indians or the Civil War or even the American frontier. Its historical context was irrelevant to the story, a hoary feel-good plot, updated for PC times, that turns on its heros dissatisfaction with his FOR ADDITIONAL FILM REVIEWS, SEE THE Calendar Film section ON PAGE 59 tagonists Hollywood uses to woik out its own guilts. That is not to say theres nothing going on his head; but theres nothing insignificant going on. Hawkeye cairies about him the shimmer of knowledge that his own existence is a lesponse to the larger and mote pressing demands of the land.

Stripped of model neui oses which aie in part the product of our desecration of the land, Hawkeye is all true man and still human, a juggernaut of skill, grace and deep emotion. By all accounts, the Filming of The list of the Mohicans had everything a boy adventure needs except a sign reading No Guils. Mann apparently let his famous attention to detail run roughshod over an often mutinous cast and crew as he and star Day-Lewis toyed with flintlocks and learned to skin animals in something like a lavishly subsidized wildman retreat. But like Ridley Scott, whose notorious absolutism on the set of Blade Runner ably served a film that virtually rewrote our vision of the future, Mann has created a rigorously beautiful film that rewrites our vision of historv.Pl culture and search for redemption amid a natural people. (Even Costners soldier-turned-Sioux had his limits he never rustled up any regret for introducing his Indian friends to the miracle of gunfire.) Michael Mann probably cares less about po OCTOBER 2-OCTOBER 8, 1992 LA WEEKLY 37.