The Donner Party

The issue I have with any recent movie in the last couple decades is they put "based on a true story" while not even trying to follow any of the actual events.

It's along the lines of the story writer reading about the Revolutionary War, and then involving jet skis and aliens in the timeline, and then claiming it was "based on a true story." Although I'm sure there are many earlier examples, "A Perfect Storm" is the first one I remember. Essentially, the only thing they knew about the boat was that it sank out at sea after losing radio contact. Somehow they turned that into an an over 2 hour movie. None of anything in that movie was verifiably true other than the names and possibly the characteristics of the people.

This movie is worse, because it had a somewhat rich source of information from the survivors in which to try and follow the true story. Basically none of that was even touched on. The entire movie was "hey, some people might have been cannibals," and then they made a villain.

If you are looking for something that will actually tell you what the Donner Party was like, do not watch this film. I'd suggest a documentary instead. Otherwise, this film is about as true to the source as "Cannibal: The Musical," and that film was more enjoyable.

Director T.J. Martin does history justice as he puts this capable cast through their paces.

Here, Crispin Glover's innate squirmy quirkiness is concealed and re-purposed as duplicity, guile, and scheming.

With limited backdrop and no Hollywood trickery, Martin sets out to tell an uncomfortable tale of impossible choices, selfish agendas, and moral gray areas.

The result is a stark and unforgiving portrayal of the depth of the breakdown of social norms in a desperate wilderness survival situation.

No gimmicks. No stunts. No eye-popping effects.

Just the refreshing gift of good actors bringing characters to life and a director telling a well- written and conceived story.

The film is not based on any true historical fact as far as I could see. Even in the opening, the eventual place the Donner party hoped to get to was written as 'Sutter Fort.' Twice. Most Californians know the fort was Sutter's Fort. Glaring typo from the get go or laziness with regard to historical accuracy. You don't even have to be a Californian to know it is Sutter's Fort because the site is mentioned in grade school textbooks.

The rescue party consisted of much fewer members than were portrayed. The cannibalism occurred in the Donner camp and it was only as a very last resort and the 'victim' was already dead from exposure and starvation.

The film would have been much better if the director had focused on the powerful stories of the survivors instead of resorting to a sensationalistic cannibalism tale. There was so much more to this drama than starving humans compromising all they believed in by eating human flesh.

I could not even watch the entire film because it was so dreadful.

Not being by any means an expert on the story of the Donner Party, I've nevertheless done some reading on the subject. It's one of the truly tragic stories of American history that should probably be better known than it is. I stumbled upon this movie quite by chance and decided to give it a go. The criticisms that I've read of it are - strangely - both accurate and unfair. It's true that there were some liberties taken with the story. This is by no means a documentary about this incident. If that's what you want, there are books and documentaries to be consulted. This is Hollywood entertainment - and apparently low budget entertainment as well. The film-makers had to deal with some significant production issues. Given some of the challenges they faced, I thought this turned out to be a workable movie that will hopefully whet the appetite of viewers for more information about this rather famous incident in American history. Yes, I know that some will see this and assume that because they've seen it they know everything about the subject. That's unfortunate, but it doesn't take away the fact that in general terms this portrayal of the story worked fairly well.

Some criticize it for not being "interesting" enough. I'm not sure what those critics wanted. The liberties that were taken were done to inject a spark into the movie, and the movie is already criticized for doing that. This is a movie about desperate people facing desperate circumstances. It's not an action-thriller. It depicts the plight of the travellers. Some criticize it for a lack of character development. The funny thing is that's something I liked about this. I suppose an extra 30-60 minutes could have been added on to this to show the group gathering in Independence, Missouri and getting to know each other and travelling happily across the plains. Now that would have been dull. Instead, we pick up the party already in desperate circumstances. Perhaps the struggle of the trek through the Great Salt Desert would have been interesting. Aside from that (and it would have been difficult to jump from that to the point at which the movie actually started, and cumbersome to include the intervening time) I was happy enough with the story. It's true that perhaps the lack of character development meant we had little emotional connection to the characters, but the story was about the group and its plight and what it finally drove them to, not about the individuals.

The material about cannibalism was, I thought, handled sensitively. It's often over-emphasized and sensationalized in tales about the Donner Party, almost as if there was a cannibalistic feeding frenzy that went on among them. In fact, it was a desperate, last resort when there was literally no other source of food. In that sense, this is a bit reminiscent of the movie "Alive" which also dealt with the issue of cannibalism in desperate circumstances, although "Alive" had a much more spiritual sense to it.

Basically, I thought this was well done. (7/10)

The only reason I finished this movie was that I was waiting for it to get better. At one point I paused it and saw there was only 15 minutes left and was so bored I fast-forwarded through the rest.

I expected one of two things, a movie out to entertain through shock value or an American Epic. I got neither. Therein lies the problem; the movie's scope simply isn't grand enough. With all the drama, betrayal, tragedy, desperation, and heartbreak that occurred during these events you'd think that you'd see some of it on screen. I'm no expert on the Donner Party, but as I understand the trip took months just to get to the point the film starts up. Where it proceeds to tell a small 2 week time frame about the hardships of the people who made an attempt at being rescued.

This could have been a sprawling epic of the American Pioneer days on par with 'Dances with Wolves', yet we only get to see the small group and how hungry they are. That's it. We see nothing of what happened to the 30+ people back at the camp. I heard they had to resort to eating leather clothes and bones boiled so many times over they became brittle and edible, none of that made it into the film. If you cut out all of the establishing shots of snow and trees the movie wouldn't have even been an hour long.

Bottom line, read the Wikipedia article, skip the movie.