The Last of the Mohicans

365 Films

Entry #15

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Directed by: Michael Mann

The Last of the Mohicans was a landmark movie for me.  The circumstances under which I saw this film will remain forever in the annals of Ethan lore.  This was the first R-rated movie I ever had the pleasure of seeing at the tender age of 8.  Here’s what I remember: it was a Monday and we went to the Christiana Mall specifically to see it.  This raises many intriguing questions.  Why wasn’t I in school on a Monday? It’s possible that it was a holiday weekend, I was sick, or I faked an illness.  That last one doesn’t sound like me so I’m going to go with holiday.  The odd part is that I specifically remember being aware of the fact that I should have been in school on that day.  If that’s the case, it’s most likely that I was sick.  But if I was sick, why was I going on a field trip to a mall to see a two-hour long epic romance about the French and Indian war?  There are so many tantalizing possibilities about which, I’m sure none of you give even the faintest possibility of a shit.  Regardless of what actually happened, I remember the experience of watching the movie so vividly.  I remember that this theater was the first time I saw a woman with a shaved head.  I remember the feeling of being let into an exclusive club and the unbearable anticipation of seeing the film and subsequently reporting back to my friends about it.  I don’t think I had quite grasped the notion of how much I loved movies at age eight.  This film kick started the entire process if that was the case.  It doesn’t matter that I barely retained any of the actual film, does it?  Being an eight-year-old boy, the most memorable images of the film were of a man being scalped, a man having his still-beating heart ripped out, and a man being burned alive at the stake.  It was frightening, it was exhilarating, but most of all, it was new!  I got to be the toast of my third grade class for about five minutes.  At which point they got bored of my temporary visit to the adult world and moved on to something far more interesting, a kickball game maybe.  I, on the other hand, was not ready to move on and like a hungry, hungry hippo I only wanted more.  I suppose I was quite lucky to get Mohicans to pop my R-rated cherry.  The movie has remained a perennial favorite in our household due to my Mom’s open obsession with it.  Later in life, I grew into a Michael Mann obsession that began with Heat (the project after Mohicans) and has continued with each subsequent film.  The fact that Daniel Day Lewis has grown in stature to an actor of unfathomable talents and gifts probably doesn’t hurt either.  So while the film itself may not have set my particular world on fire, every time I get the chance to revisit (Mann practically puts out a new cut every month) I am reminded of why it has remained so firmly etched in my subconscious all these years.  Mann’s thematic fascination with loners hacking a life out of the frontier (be it a city or the actual wilderness), the exhilarating and visceral action sequences, and the fact that the final thirty minutes of this movie may be the best final thirty minutes of any movie in the history of filmmaking make this a pretty fantastic introduction into the world of Restricted Cinema.