“I do not call myself subject to much at all.”

Michael Mann has spent the bulk of his career depicting contemporary American crime in film. The Last of the Mohicans is not contemporary, nor does it depict crime. And although Waldseemüller named the Americas in 1507, it is set before the formation of the United States and is thus only connected to modern America via geographical ties (it’s set in the Adirondack Mountains). So what are we in for if not stylish neon noir? Well, if Daniel Day-Lewis sporting shoulder-length locks didn’t clue you in—Mann has momentarily traded in his mafia bosses, drug lords, serial killers, crooks, whistleblowers, and detectives for a frontiersman raised by a Native American Indian who finds himself dragged into the French and Indian War.¹ Apparently the director’s earliest movie memory was the 1936 version of the film (dir. George B. Seitz) which inspired him to take on the lightly sweeping war epic.

It’s cut from a cloth much different than the rest of his oeuvre and yet it retains many of his trademarks. Bows, arrows, powder horns, muskets, cannons, tomahawks, knives, powdered wigs, dresses, crisp uniforms, moccasins, canoes… this is Michael Mann we’re talking about, so all the period details have been painstakingly fussed over. And not just visually, but the languages, the war cries, the musket shots, the echoing cannon blasts—all superbly realized. This attention to authentic detail combined with the profusion of extras and breathtaking location shoots strikes the eye as impressively legitimate.

Even so, because of his preference for minimal exposition, we often find ourselves transported from set piece to set piece without gleaning a sense of the war’s wider scope. That’s a shame because the individual battles achieve a startling sense of scale and tactility that CGI copy-pasted battles of modern films fail to convey. A bit more scene-setting to flesh out the larger conflict would have been welcome, but Mann chose a different direction, perhaps dictated by the source material.

Indeed, there are a number of iconic shots that add feathers to Mann’s stylist cap. A musket shot captured from head-on; a thrown tomahawk that makes you clutch at your own chest as it rapidly grows within the static frame; the wizened Chingachgook (Russell Means) taking a gunstock club to a ruthless Huron warrior; a French/British treaty negotiation in a blackened field overlooking a lake.

The first hour or so is convoluted as it sketches the outlines of the French-British conflict, the alliances between various Indian tribes and the Europeans, and the colonialists’ tentative agreement to support the British on the condition that they be allowed leave to defend their homesteads (incl. their women and children) if necessary. It is refreshing that Mann is willing to trust his audience to keep up with the shifting loyalties, but he never clarifies what exactly any faction is fighting for, besides the colonialists who abandon their posts to fight for hearth and home. And all that historical context is eventually jettisoned in favor of an isolated romantic arc for an iconic hero.

The lens stays primarily focused on Hawkeye (Day-Lewis) as he finds himself unwittingly roped into the turf war. A troop of British soldiers led by Major Duncan Heyward (Steven Waddington) is en route to Fort William Henry (built from scratch for the production) when they are attacked by a Huron war party. They were led into the massacre by Magua (Wes Studi), a Huron posing as a Mohawk guide. Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Uncas (Eric Schweig) have been tracking the party and jump into the fray. All of the common soldiers are killed but Duncan is spared along with Cora (Madeleine Stowe) and Alice (Jodhi May), the daughters of Colonel Munro (Maurice Roëves), who commands the fort.

Hawkeye and the Mohicans guide the survivors to the fort, finding it under siege by the French when they arrive. Sympathetic to the colonial militia who have agreed to conditionally supplement the British forces, Hawkeye helps several of them covertly abandon their posts in order that they may defend their homesteads. For this he is arrested for sedition and sentenced to hang. But before he meets the noose, Munro surrenders the fort to Louis-Joseph de Montcalm (Patrice Chéreau), whose gracious terms of surrender allowed for the British troops to return to Europe rather than be taken prisoner or killed. However, these terms are disagreeable to Magua, who has openly stated his desire to eat Munro’s heart and terminate his genetic line. Heroics and passionate speeches ensue.

Hawkeye: My father’s people say that at the birth of the sun and of his brother the moon, their mother died. So the sun gave to the earth her body, from which was to spring all life. And he drew forth from her breast the stars, and the stars he threw into the night sky to remind him of her soul. So there’s the Cameron’s monument. My folks’ too, I guess.

Cora: You are right, Mr. Poe. We do not understand what is happening here. And it’s not as I imagined it would be, thinking of it in Boston and in London…

Hawkeye: Sorry to disappoint you.

Cora: No, on the contrary. It is more deeply stirring to my blood than any imagining could possibly have been.

There’s a love story woven in here that turns the focus inward. Though initially put off by their cultural differences, Hawkeye and Cora soon develop a stirring romance—one that achieves a stunning depth in just a few short scenes. Hawkeye, with grounded focus, pursues the woman with the single-minded attention we have seen him direct toward hunting and fighting. At one point he is caught staring at the object of his desire. “What are you looking at, sir?” she asks. “I’m looking at you, miss.” It’s the first time they’ve locked eyes and she comes to realize (as we do) that a committed romantic pursuit has been occurring beneath the surface. Working in concert with their mid-war love story is Duncan’s failed pursuit of Cora. Spurned by the woman he envisioned as his wife, he regrettably turns against Hawkeye—the man who saved his life—but is ultimately given a beautiful chance at redemption that he seizes.

At times, Day-Lewis’s grounded reserve seems to contradict Mann’s screenplay which was written for a modern audience. The actor, notorious for his methodical commitment, carried his gun around on set and aimed to portray the character as if he “had not been touched by 20th century neuroses.” Hunkering down in the backwoods, he committed himself to learning survival skills—trapping, gutting, skinning, canoe building, firemaking, muzzleloader reloading. He has successfully convinced audiences that he was a natural at any number of occupations and he transforms here into a man raised in the forest, who could travel for days with little food without leaving a trace, and capably defend himself in battle. It’s hard to deny, and yet his practiced detachment from the world seems at odds with a screenplay that places him at the center of a storybook romance (the cloying theme doesn’t help either).

But let’s not get too far into splitting hairs. Give me the commitment of Day-Lewis and the perfectionism of Mann any day and I’ll be a happy camper. Regarding that perfectionism, Mann has released three different versions of the film which widen the narrative scope and/or dial in the knob of Hawkeye’s laconic sarcasm. A solid analysis at The Anomalous Host (beware f-bombs) breaks down some of these differences and posits that none do the thing justice (check out the comments below for his own “fan cut”). Certainly a worthy effort even if its attenuated drama doesn’t live up to the epic battle sequences.

1. I had no experience with the oft-adapted source material prior to watching Mann’s film, and was relieved to discover that we were not expected to pretend that DDL was indigenous.

Sources:
“Daniel Day-Lewis: Hollywood’s most wanted”. The Independent. 07 January 2003.