Black Robe feat. Scout Tafoya

Hit Factory

Filmmaker, critic, video essayist and author Scout Tafoya joins the show to discuss the work of undersung journeyman Bruce Beresford and his brilliant 1991 film 'Black Robe', a story of faith, the frontier, and the church as a pernicious vestige of the European colonial project. Set amidst the 17th Century French conquests of North America in modern-day Quebec, the film follows the titular Black Robe, Father Laforgue, a Jesuit Missionary tasked with bringing Christianity to the indigenous populations of the region. As he ventures deep into Huron territory with his company of Algonquin guides, the limits of his faith and reason are tested, as it becomes clear that his beliefs and the promises they supposedly carry can find no purchase with a people who have no need for them. Greenlit in the wake of the success of 'Dances With Wolves' and cashing in on an exceptional amount of goodwill Beresford had accrued after directing the Academy Award-winning 'Driving Miss Daisy', the film is a brilliant study of self-deception, and the profoundly human impulses of one's perceptions of the divine.

We discuss Beresford as filmmaker, his history as a contemporary of Australian greats Peter Weir and George Miller, and why his work deserves an immediate and vast reappraisal. Then, we discuss 'Black Robe', its exacting observations of faith and imperialism, and its unusually sensitive and well-researched portrayals of indigenous American tribes. Finally, we talk about other films in the canon of great portrayals of faith and the frontier, including Michael Mann's gorgeous 'The Last of the Mohicans' and Martin Scorsese's late-period masterpiece 'Silence'.

Follow Scout Tafoya on Twitter.

Support Scout's video essay work and criticism on Patreon.

Buy Scout's book 'But God Made Him a Poet: Watching John Ford in the 21st Century".

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.