A Man Called Horse | Richard Harris, Judith Anderson

A Man Called Horse | Richard Harris, Judith Anderson | A first in empathy for Sioux Indians

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A Man Called Horse

	A Man Called Horse Richard Harris, Judith Anderson Paramount, 2003 average customer review:based on 27 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

American Indians were a "cool" factor in 1970 cinema, the year A Man Called Horse made its vigorous, feverishly real, and occasionally shocking debut alongside Little Big Man and Soldier Blue. Unlike the latter two films, however, Horse is less an allegory for Vietnam-era America and more of a vision quest for historical identity. In one of his defining roles, Richard Harris plays an English aristocrat captured by Dakota Sioux in 1825. Over time, he adopts their way of life and eventually becomes tribal leader--but not before undergoing savage initiation rituals, the most famous of which involves being suspended by blades inserted beneath Harris's pectoral muscles. Horse looks clunky, quaint, and inadvertently demeaning in some respects today, but the film's Native American milieu is at least defined on its own terms, i.e., whole cloth and apart from familiar Western conventions. The real draw is Harris, whose performance has a soulful integrity. --Tom Keogh

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A Learning Experience

If people thought Mel Gibson had it tough getting people to watch a movie that was fully in Aramaic, think back to 1970 when A Man Called Horse came out. This movie is almost entirely spoken in Lakota, and there aren't subtitles. This helps you to really get a sense of what it was like to be thrown into a foreign culture and to try to thrive there.

Richard Harris plays John Morgan, a nobleman from England who has gotten bored with life and has been romping around the plans of the American West to find something more interesting. This is back in the 1820s, before the civil war, when there were vast expanses of quiet. Suddenly, Morgan is captured by the Sioux Indians. They treat him like a pack animal, calling him horse. It's not necessarily that the natives were "excessively cruel" to their captured slaves, in an unusual way. They looked down on them just as the southerners looked down on their slaves. They treated them as functional possessions - to be fed and watered, but certainly not paid much concern to. Morgan has to do chores, eat what is given to him, and sleep outside in the cold.

Morgan learns to do what he must to stay alive, including defending his dignity. We get an "I am not a horse!" stand, very much reminding us of "I am not an animal!" from a certain other movie. Every person wants to be respected for their humanity. The chief's sister falls for his good looks and soon the two are making goo-goo eyes at each other. But there's a catch. For Morgan to get the girl, he needs scars on his chest.

In a scene which probably goes down as one of the most memorable in all movies featuring native american cultures, claws are inserted into Morgan's chest muscles and he is suspended by them, spinning in slow circles. It is of course agonizing. But it was also a rite of passage, a way for a boy to prove he had become a man. A tribal "tattoo" if you will. The ceremony was the Sun Dance, to celebrate the strength and power of life.

I give the movie high marks for really striving to keep the situations authentic. We don't get translations of all the Lakota language, nor is the movie "dubbed" in English. Instead, you have to listen to the native language and try to learn as you go what they are saying. There are of course English sections where Morgan is talking to himself or to another captive in the group. The clothing, the homes, the ceremonial lodge are all quite fascinating to see. Many of the actors were from the Sioux reservation and knew how to do these things properly.

That being said, there is also a bit of "English dude saves backwards natives" as well. It's Morgan's skilled tactics that save the day when a battle ensues - even though this tribe has been fighting wars their entire lives, while Morgan has been off lazing in the sun. The chief's daughter could marry whoever she wanted and choose the "best of the best" - and she goes for Morgan. In very little time - and without really learning the language - Morgan goes from looked down on slave to most exulted leader.

I am also a bit embarassed that they had such trouble finding real native americans to play the lead roles. I realize if we watch a movie about the Roman Empire we tend to have Americans, not 100% Romans, playing those parts. They put Americans into all the parts in a Robin Hood movie, too. However, Native Americans *are* Americans and they were right there in the areas that the movies were being filmed. Instead, they took actors who did not look Native American at all, painted them red, and made it seem that it was good enough. I certainly understand that a good actor can submerge himself into the part, but if the movie is about a captured male African slave and his traumas coming to America, it wouldn't do well to have that played by Gwyneth Paltrow and filmed in Siberia. As good as an actress as she is, the visual mismatch would interfere with the story.

Still, in all, it is definitely a movie to watch at least one, and appreciate the parts that were done well. At one point, Morgan's fellow slave crows over a bad thing which has happened to one of the Sioux. Morgan turns and snarls at him, asking him if he has learned nothing in the five years he has been with the tribe. I certainly appreciate that sense that we can all learn from other cultures, if we would just open our ears and listen.

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A first in empathy for Sioux Indians

It is one of the rare films about American Indians that is not at all concerned by their extermination by Custer and company. But it is in fact a lot deeper than that. It shows from inside the functioning, the culture, the rites and rituals of Sioux Indians when a white English Lord is captured and turned into a slave for some time. It shows how he manages to become a warrior by killing two Shoshone assailants. Then he marries the sister of the chief and eventually becomes the chief after a war with the Shoshones who attack the village that he defends successfully. And then they move. It shows how hard they are with old women when their sons have disappeared. It shows how hard they are with their warriors who have to go through very cruel rites. Pain is the deliverer of the soul. It shows the basic motivation of wars between tribes: to loot the others, in other words to survive by doing nothing productive but appropriating what is not theirs but the others'. It could be considered as light anthropologically but when it came out in 1970 it was a real revolution in the sympathy and empathy it conveyed about the Indians, but also about the fact that cruelty and pain were never looked for per se but always to prove the courage and the strength of the person. In other words it is the proof that Sioux Indians had a high level of morality based on proved physical endurance and courage. It also proved that love was a real dimension among them governing the relations among fellow human beings in the tribe and between men and women, though their love was not necessarily expressed the way we would romantically adorn it.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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History of Native American Life

Being a history teacher, I needed a movie that would depict realistic Native American life for a Texas history unit. I remembered this movie
from my youth and what an impact it made on the nation. My students are not exposed to those great epic movies of yesterday. This film is an accurate accounting of everyday village life of the Sioux. It truly is a
historical classic with superb acting from Richard Harris and others. It is a must see and one for our children to view in their studies of Native Americans.

Silverstein's camera captures beautifully the expansive outdoor of the Sioux way of life and their rituals...

The story begins with a British aristocrat named John Morgan who finds himself captured by Sioux warriors... At first he's mocked and treated like an animal and then he's dragged to their camp where he is given to work for an old squaw (Judith Anderson).

Before too long the 'grand white gentleman' up with another captive Batise (Jean Gascon) whose family was all massacred five years ago by the Indians acts as translator for Morgan... One day after killing two Shoshone Indians from another tribe and scalping one of them, John gains trust and respect from his captives thus paving the way to be soon a warrior, then a loving husband...

The film's centerpiece is the Sun Vow that Morgan must bear to prove his courage to withstand all tests of pain in order to gain the hand of Running Dear (Corinna Tsopei) sister of Chief Yellow Hand (Manu Tupou). As the English nobleman is white, he is considered weak and he'll give up in the moment of truth...

There are also other truly memorable moments in the film: how the Indian virgin prepares herself for marriage--how she takes her sweat bath to be pure; and the tragic events when an Indian mother loses and has no other son or man, how she cuts off her forefinger and when winter comes she dies from the freezing cold...

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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