This film is often compared with Dances With Wolves, which is certainly understandable, but personally I feel that Black Robe is the better film, both in terms of art and fidelity to historical fact. I am a history graduate student in New York currently teaching an undergraduate class in the Bronx on early U.S. history, and Black Robe is just about the only film I have no hesitation showing to my students.<br /><br />As a portrait of life in New France (now Eastern Canada) in the early to mid-1600s--when Samuel de Champlain was the leader of the tiny French outpost of Quebec--this film is virtually flawless. The complex relations between ordinary French colonists (almost all male), French Jesuit priests, and Native American tribes in the region (primarily Algonquian, which is a very broad category encompassing many distinct tribes) are rendered with a wonderful degree of accuracy, at least in my opinion. Colonists in New France generally took greater care than other Europeans--particularly the Spanish and the English--to have amicable relations with native people's they encountered. This is evident from the film but is not overemphasized, as we see the obvious conflicts between the French and their nominal Indian allies.<br /><br />Black Robe's take on religion during this time period is smart, and illustrates some of the similarities between native and European beliefs while demonstrating the latter's contempt for native religion (the main character--"Black Robe," a term many Algonquians used both in the movie and in historical fact to describe the French Jesuit priests--is the primary example here). The Native Americans we encounter in this film are not portrayed in some idealized, pre-historic fashion, but rather as complex, violence-prone tribes as was actually the case. This does not diminish our sympathy for them and the difficulties they face as a result of the arrival of Europeans--as it should not--and instead actually shows the great extent to which Native Americans in early colonial history had power and affected the course of events.<br /><br />I write this review mainly as a student of history, but in terms of the art of cinema I think Black Robe is also excellent. The film is beautifully shot, and the characters are drawn with a fair amount of complexity. It is a very "un-Hollywood" film (being Canadian) which probably partially explains why it succeeds. I would recommend it to anyone interested in this period (the "American" colonies during the 1600s) or anyone who was intrigued by films like Dances With Wolves or Last of the Mohicans. This film has no big stars or Hollywood-style love story (such as the one that made Last of the Mohicans essentially unbearable to watch) but it does a great job presenting the complex dynamic between Native Americans and Europeans during the colonial period. Serious students of history (including teachers looking to show a film about Native-European relations) will find much to appreciate in Black Robe, and I think anyone who likes an interesting film even if it does not have famous actors in it will as well.