emotional mohicans

yesterday, i watched - surprise, surprise - the last of the mohicans again. of course, this time i didn't watch the last ten minutes of the movie and when one character cut out the heart of someone else, i plugged my ears and turned my head. anyway, i think i realized what made me so upset about the movie [note - spoiler] :

1. both maj. duncan and hawkeye loved cora. cora turned down duncan's marriage proposal, and she loved hawkeye. understandably, duncan hated hawkeye. at the end of the movie, when cora was going to be burned at the stake and hawkeye yelled that he wanted to take her place, instead of duncan translating that to the native american chief, he said that he - duncan, that is - wanted to take cora's place.

ok, i know i just lost you, so let me rephrase it. duncan and cora were taken captive by this native american (n.a.) tribe, and hawkeye came to rescue them. the n.a. chief declared that duncan, an english soldier, should be returned to the english army, cora should be burned at the stake to avenge the deaths of n.a. people, and hawkeye was pardoned. hawkeye was speaking in english to duncan, who was translating it to french for the chief (obviously, the chief spoke french). when hawkeye realized cora was going to be killed, he yelled to the chief that he wanted to be killed in her place. hawkeye told duncan to make the translation. instead of duncan translating that hawkeye would take cora's place, he translated that he himself wanted to take her place. so they burned duncan at the stake.

what bothered me is i think the only reason duncan asked to be killed in cora's place was because he loved her, even though she didn't love him. think about it - if he loved her and she loved him back, then it's understandable that he might want to give his life instead of hers. but to give your life for someone who doesn't even like you? on top of that, he originally hated hawkeye, but he volunteered to die so that hawkeye and cora could be together.

(last quote on the page)

that's like me loving some guy, and the guy doesn't like me but is in love w/ this other woman. someone is going to kill the guy and the woman says she'll take his place. instead, i jump in the middle to take both of their places so they can live happily ever after. that's intense.

and of course, i would've preferred a death scene where duncan just died, but of course he had to yell while he was being burned, which honestly sucked. also, even though cora's dad, edmund's, death scene lasted a few seconds, it was still hard to watch him struggle as magua (this other dude) sliced edmund's heart out of his body because he yelled and his leg started spazzing out. which brings me to point 2...

2. i don't think it's the death that bothers me so much, but rather the dying. for instance, if someone were to be here one minute and then dead the next, i wouldn't be thrilled, but i'd be ok. but the fact that people have to suffer while they're dying - that really fucks with my head. i really don't like that. that's why i can watch movies like die hard where people pretty much die instantly - it's fake and it's kind of exciting. but watching more realistic movies that shows people suffering before they die, ugh. which leads to final point...

3. it makes me think of this dumb war and say, "why the hell are we killing people?" what is up with that? i mean, violence begets more violence. it really doesn't make the world safer. it pisses off people, who want to get revenge, and the cycle is just perpetuated.

and despite the fact that we are so desensitized to all the death that's happening in iraq and other places, we don't see the picture of the suffering. we see the final numbers of how many people died that day, but we don't see the pain they went through as they were dying. we don't see the pain that other people went through when they were dying. the lucky ones get riddled with bullets or get blown to pieces instantly. there's many more, though, who might take minutes or hours to die, who are burned to death, or might have someone cut their limbs from their body, or other stuff.

we think we're so advanced because we have all these modern weapons that kill people quicker. but pain is pain. someone in pain today is in just as much pain as 500 years ago. someone being burned to death today is in just as much pain as someone burned to death 5,000 years ago. someone being beheaded today is in just as much pain as someone being beheaded hundreds of years ago.

i think everyone who supports war should have to see footage of actual combat and have to watch actual people die. not see dead people - actually watch the people die. how is our sense of self-righteousness any better than the people in last of the mohicans?

(pictures, albeit in dutch)