Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Film: Last of His Tribe

Film: The Last of His Tribe, the story of Ishi (starring Graham Greene)

When I was a student at Berkeley, I spent a lot of time doing work in the Anthropology Library in Kroeber Hall, and I would sometimes visit the museum there, and attend events in the "Ishi Courtyard" of Dwinelle hall... but I never really knew the story of Ishi in any detail. This film was a really intense and moving introduction to that story. Graham Greene was absolutely fantastic as Ishi, and Jon Voight as Kroeber was really good, too - the film did not show away from Kroeber's own ambivalence and shortcomings, which made his grief at the end of the movie all the more moving.

There's a documentary about Ishi that I've ordered from Netflix now also - I'll post about that after I get a chance to watch it. I'm curious how much liberty the film took with history in order to create this story... but it's a great story in any case, absolutely worth watching, unforgettable.

Here is a photo of Ishi and Kroeber which I found at wikipedia:


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