The MoFo Movie Club Discussion: Little Big Man

Welcome one and all MoFo's, to another edition of the MoFo movie club. This time around we'll be crunching up a movie called, Little Big Man. As usual this is a spoiler free zone so if you haven't seen this film; and you don't want to know if Custer lives at the end, then, READ NO FURTHER!



"There is an endless supply of white men. There has always been a limited number of human beings." - Old Lodge Skins

Ain't that the truth? I think it is anyway. I'm going to try really hard to not let myself go off on too many tirades while getting this thread started. There will plenty of time for that later I'm sure when all the historians log on and tell all of us how historically inaccurate and unrealistic this film is.

No, what I'm going to try to focus on to begin with is why I used to stay away from these types of films. Movies that show me the not so clean underbelly of the American way of life can be a little difficult to watch. Movies that make me think can be hard to watch too. I'd say this film does both. And yet, the movie at times is very light and even quite funny. It manages to walk a very tight line of tragic and lighthearted emotion throughout its entire runtime.

Take this exchange for instance:

Allardyce T. Merriwhether: "Men will believe anything, the more preposterous the better. Whales speak French at the bottom of the sea. The horses of Arabia have silver wings. Pygmies mate with elephants in darkest Africa. I have sold all those propositions."

Jack Crabb: "Well, maybe we're all fools and none of it matters."

I have heard this little exchange several times and it always strikes me that these words are the heart of this entire film. Maybe the heart of the argument for a lot of things in life for that matter. I love that.

Now, the historians are probably going to come on here and tell us all how none of these things depicted in this film really happened the way they did onscreen and that's fine. Movies rarely get the facts straight. Movies aren't about facts. Movies are about feelings, stories and people.

Speaking of people, what did you all think of Custer? The Custer portrayed in the film was most likely a very watered down version of the real Custer but I think we got the point. Or maybe, at least I did. To me, he seemed like a classic American military man. A blowhard perhaps, but the commander nevertheless, no matter what it took for him to garner the position.

Supposedly he was against the actions that the U.S. was taking towards the Indians and yet that didn't stop him from doing his fair share of murdering women and children. If you thought the deaths in this film were sad and graphic then I challenge you to think about what it must have been like to really be there. Does that make him a bad guy? Or just a fool? Maybe he was both, I don't know. Sadly, to me, I think its a travesty that he is painted as a hero in American history books, but maybe that's just me.

But again; maybe none of it matters.

Well enough from me, what did you all think of the film?

__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

I've got lots to say but it's too soon right now. Just remember that the film even implies that Jack Crabb is so old and drugged up in that Cuckoo's Nest he lives at that the entire film could be a fabrication. Also, Jack Crabb comes right out and tells you he's a liar, so maybe that lets the film defend itself against people who want to complain about it somehow not being historically accurate. I've heard plenty of different complaints in the past but as I said, it's too early for me to jump in here right now. Oh well, I guess I can say that although Custer is a significant character, he doesn't have much screen time so he's painted in broad strokes so that you can understand him from Jack's perspective. You could say Custer's a "cartoon", but if so, he's a damn scary cartoon.

__________________
It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

If this story is a fabrication, then so is Inception. Just sayin'

The movie stays pretty close to the book, but also simplifies. In the movie one Indian tribe murder's Jack's parents and another tribe takes in him and his sister. In the novel the same Indians do both. And Custer in the novel is not the complete idiot in the movie. The novel presents a more complex view of the American West and has more of a consistent comic feel than the film where the tone is a little more shaky with the shifts from massacres of Indians and Jack's more farcial adventures.

People have complained about the jarring shifts in tone but all it really mirrors is life. Everyone has their ups and downs, their happy times and tragedies, and since Jack Crabb has lived longer than everybody else and lived a rich, varied life, it makes sense that he paints his highlights (and lowlights) since this is only a 140 minute movie and not an eight-hour mini series. How many years do you think Jack has been in that "home"? He's 121, so he could have been in there for 30-40 years. Then again, based on how the movie shows the setting, that could be a mental hospital.

It's definitely not a mental hospital in the book. The first chapter or prologue is first person of the interviewer of Jack and his conversations with him and the rest like the movie is Jack's narrative.

Little Big Man is another cool movie. I wouldn't have missed that for anything, either. Dustin Hoffman is wonderful as the main character.

__________________
"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

Skipping over all the posts, since I haven't seen this yet, but I've got my copy and should be able to catch it in the next day or two.

Oh, and the Movie Club page has been updated with this thread and pretty background images and whatnot.

Just bought the dvd for my husband at Christmas, one of his favorite movies and I love it as well. Dustin Hoffman is excellent, great movie and the make-up for Hoffman's character is fantastic.

__________________
BigScreenBytes.com
Movie Reviews | TV Recaps

Still waiting for a copy. I will probably get it from NetFlix.

Most characters in the film are cartoons, but it works. Sure Custer is exaggerated, but not as much as Bill Hickok, Younger Bear or Caroline. And good point about Crabb being an unreliable narrator. There's a point in the film where Crabb makes a point to mention, "And that is a true historical fact." He says it as though what has come before might not be.

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201

Anyone else watched this?

You have to remember, however, that Merriwhether is a con man and total cynic--yet not so smart since some of his victims catch up with him and Jack and tar and feather them. Through the film, he gets whittled away, evidently by folks who finally got wise to him. Not all men will believe anything. But some men can tell a tale so well they can sell it to those who should know better.

Being one of the "dreaded historians," I'd point out that the main thing about Custer that this film does not make plain is that the man was brave to the point of recklessness. He didn't earn his reputation raiding villages of half-naked Indians. He earned it on the battlefields of the Civil War at a time when the Confederate cavalry was man for man and horse for horse superior to the US cavalry. Regardless of how it was played in another western They Died with their Boots On, Custer did not become the youngest US general in the Civil War through a fluke. It was for his ability, his bravery, and his willingness to take calculated chances. In one of his first major battles, Custer personally led several charges against superior Confederate forces that was a major factor in a US victory. At Gettysburg, he stopped J.E.B. Stuart from moving into position behind the Union Army that could have turned Pickett's Charge into a victory. The guy always led from the front, not sitting in the rear like some generals.

Bravery ran in the Custer family. George's brother Tom (who along with a nephew also died at the Little Big Horn battle) was one of the few men in American history who won the Medal of Honor twice.

But Custer's bravery also worked against him; on the morning before his final battle, his Crow scouts told him they could see a huge herd of Sioux and Cheyenne ponies indicating a bigger than expected village close by. But Custer and the other "whites" couldn't make them out. When the Crow began preparing for what they knew would be a fatal battle, they sang their death songs. This angered Custer who told his chief scout to tell the Crow they were old women and didn't deserve to take part in what he was sure would be a victorious battle. The scout simply told them they were no longer needed and were free to leave. Most did, although Major Reno had some Crow scouts with him when he opened the attack on one end of the village as Custer circled around to catch the warriors who he was sure would flee from Reno's attack.

Remember, too, that what little we know of what happened to Custer after he split his command came from testimony from his two junior officers Reno and Capt. Benteen at a military hearing some months later. Reno and Benteen disliked Custer, and there were some who thought they failed to support him when they could hear heavy gunfire from the direction he had gone, so they painted a bad picture of Custer on that day. On the other hand, Custer likely would have been forgotten years or go or else be a minor footnote in the history of the West if not for his wife who spent the rest of her life promoting the Custer Legend. So basically all we know of him is from people who hated him and were trying to cover their ass and a wife who glorified him as the god of battle.

Thing is, Custer's approach to that battle had worked before in other raids on Indian encampments, so he saw no reason it wouldn't work again. And he did catch the camp by surprise. None of the Indians even knew any Army unit was near until Reno charged the camp.

This time, however, there were some unusual elements that contributed to Custer's downfall.

For one thing, the village he attacked was unusually huge, with the Sioux and Cheyenne meeting together in what must have been one of the largest gatherings in US history. Most villages were fairly small, and the Army outnumbered the warriors, but in this case the warrors outnumbered the Army by a large margin.

Second, they were better armed than the Army, with many repeating rifles to the Army's single-shot rifles.

Third, usually Indians did try to flee when the Army attacked their camps because they knew they couldn't win a toe-to-toe shoot out with the Army. But this time instead of running away, they came running to fight.

Four, one of the Indians in camp was Crazy Horse, a Cheyenne with a reputation as a fearless, relentless fighter--in fact, he thought his medicine made him bulletproof, and for a long time he was right. However at this point, he was the idol of many of the younger warriors who wanted to prove they were as brave as he.

Five, also in camp was the Sioux Sitting Bull who was respected for his powerful medicine--not to cure illness, but to foresee the future and such. He was in real life what Old Lodge Skins was in the movie, and just the day before he had a dream of white soldiers falling headfirst from the sky into the village. He said this meant many soldiers would attack the camp and all of them would die.

Six, the Indians had already fought and turned back one of the three military columns that were supposed to be converging at the Little Big Horn. The other column was behind schedule, and Custer had ridden ahead of his own column in hopes of gaining glory for another victory.

Instead, he runs into a bigger than expected force of experienced and inspired warrors who outnumber his force, are better armed, and already "know" they're going to win the battle.

The film plays Custer as a pompous buffoon who at the end is obviously mad. In real life, Custer was a little of that with a huge ambition, but more than that too. But his character fits in with the rest of the comedy in Little Big Man, so it's appropriate for that film.

As for "murdering women and children" you'll notice Jack was awfully young when he went on his first raid and killed that Pawnee, shooting an arrow into his back. In the Indian wars, a 12-year-old could drop you in your tracks, and if you were unlucky enough to be captured alive, the women in the tribe would make your last hours a hell of pain and torture. The Sioux and Crow and Pawnee had done that to each other for years, and they continued to fight that way against the "whites." Virtually every tribe involved in the Indian wars would steal white children and women to make them slaves or sell them to someone else, or else torture them to death. It was common in a raid on a lone family farm or ranch for the warriors to repeatedly rape any captured female of virtually any age before killing them. And in the Custer battle, it was the women who stripped and mutilated the soldiers' dead bodies, cutting off their privates, heads, hands, feet, eyes, whatever they would think of. So I don't see either side as being more cruel than the other.

Incidentally, killing the pony herds was a common ploy not only for Custer but for others fighting other tribes in other areas. They killed horses and burnt villages for the same reason Sherman tore up railroad tracks and burned crops in his march through Georgia--to remove the transportation and support that would maintain the enemy through the winter and into their next campaign in the field.

It's been awhile since I read the book, but as I remembered it, a different tribe did kill Jack's parents. Or more likely, he didn't know what tribe killed them. His dad and other men in the wagon train made the mistake at their last stop for supplies some days earlier of deciding to buy a lot of whiskey to trade to the Indians. As I remember the book, Jack says there must have been dozens of people passing by who could have told them that was an extremely bad idea, but didn't. So they buy the booze, and a few days later trade some to some Indians they meet on the trail who then get boozed up and kill everyone in the train for more booze and whatever else they want. I think in the book Burns Red or whoever it was who brings Jack and his sister to the Cheyenne camp did come along later by himself and find the pair.

Right. Jack lives in a house or apartment, maybe his own, but he's alone except for a housekeeper-cook who comes by for a few hours each day. There's one bit in the book about how the housekeeper takes a war bonnet from Jack's display of memobilia and goes whooping and dancing around the room, which disgusts Jack as something akin to her putting on Babe Ruth's jock-strap. Isn't the interviewer in the book working on a government works project for the depression era? There was a bunch who went around interviewing former slaves under such a project.

Oh, I don't know Ruf, I thought the film made it pretty clear how reckless Custer was. And maybe no one will ever really know for sure but I'd bet my left leg that Custer was well aware of what he was up against. He may have been many things but unprepared and under informed were hardly possible for a General. Especially a "hands on" kind of guy like himself.

Any thoughts on Crabb's statement before his last raid, on Custer needing one more major victory so he could become President?

And I'm not going to get into the debate with you about all the killings. It's pointless really. I could point out the numerous times that the U.S. broke treaties with the Indians and I'm sure you'll just point all the many times the Indians did as well. It will never go anywhere.

It doesn't surprise me that you would think one side wasn't more cruel than the other, however. History books are written by those that have conquered nations so its perfectly normal to expect our history of what was done to the Native American to be slanted in our favor.

By the by, I still have this and will watch it this week. Car stuff has totally sidetracked my evenings. Sorry.

Meanwhile, what the hell about the movie? I'd like to have a discussion about the MOVIE! I just don't like having one-way discussions.

For purely trivial reasons, I'll add that in the movie it's Shadow That Comes in Sight who finds Jack and Caroline. At the end of the film, it's plain-as-day that Jack lives in a medical facility with lots of beds, and the way he's photographed in the last shot makes it appear that he's just gone through a traumatic experience. His voice is also borderline crying when he says the words "as long as the grass grow, the wind blow and the sky is blue".

And yes, I have the novel right here in my bookcase, but I don't plan on ever quoting or discussing it unless I'm absolutely forced to do it, and even then I probably won't. I think that Little Big Man is a good movie to rewatch with "open hearts and minds".

Mark, do you agree that films and novels are two different mediums of art/storytelling and should not always be compared... at least in the regard that "the film is not as good as the book?"

I have no read the book, but I have a copy of it on my bookshelf at school for my students to read if they choose.

Also Little Big Man is a film I show every year in American Literature I class after reading some songs, trickster tales, and creation stories of various tribes. I know students are always showed Dances With Wolves, which admittably I enjoy, but Little Big Man is ten times of what the Costner film is.

I'm invisible!

__________________