Pathfinder
Its funny how some things come full circle, one day the movie theater was giving away old poster and I saw this one for the movie Pathfinder. The picture was cool and I ended up getting it but I hadn’t seen the movie. Now I happened to be looking through the $5 DVDs and it happened to be in there. Just out of curiosity I bought it. Now this movie is awesome for blood and gore and typical bad ass guy flicks but don’t watch it because of its historical content.
The basic plot is that the Viking came over to Canada and left a young boy that the Indians find and raise. The Vikings then return to the New World and going about exterminating the natives. In turn angering the ex-Norseman and leading him to seek vengeance. Now encounters between the Vikings and the Indians probably happened, we are unsure of how they went and the writer and director took some liberties with this.
First the Vikings are not historically represented, they designed them to look as mean and terrible as they could. In the bonus features they openly admit that they didn’t research much of the Vikings but they said they did a great job on the Indians. Now after watching this movie I was shocked they even say that. The Indians are just about as white as I am as far as culture. First of they had the wigwams all wrong. They do present this as being down towards Maine or the Northeast US. From my history classes I was taught that the Indians lived communally in these wigwams. Here each family has there own personal one. Then when this other tribe travels to this village to trade they shake hands when they meet. Now first off this started in ancient Rome after the murder of Caesar to show friends you didn’t have a knife, so this is a European tradition, not a native. Now also this trading band was the whole tribe, men women and children. We are unsure of Indian trading parties but evidence does suggest they traded. Making an educated guess I would say that trading parties were comprised of a small group maybe 10-20.
Another thing is the Natives spoke English, which was ok if the entire movie was in English, but the Vikings spoke Norse in the movie. Why couldn’t they have researched the Native language and tried to find out some info. Another thing that I was shocked about was the story about the two wolves fighting in your soul. I have always been told this was a Southwestern tribes legend not a Northeastern one. The one thing Im not sure about is the gentleman that played a chief in the movie. In the bonus features he says he was proud to be in such a great portrayal of Natives. Im not sure if this was out of politeness or he truly meant it but I really think it was tongue in cheek.
The movie is a great blood and guts one similar to 300 but near as good. As far as historical it is not worth watching unless you want a good laugh. To the average person it most likely doesn’t matter. I give this movie a flat hand shake (meh). It was a great guy flick but the historical inaccuracies really ruined.
