DVD Review: The Donner Party
The Donner Party (2009)
Studio: First Look Pictures
Release Date: January 26, 2010
Directed By: T. J. Martin
Cast: Crispin Glover, Clayne Crawford, Mara LaFontaine, Mark Boone Junior & Catherine Black.
Review By: Annie Riordan
The working title for this movie was The Forlorn, which is actually quite a bit more accurate in describing both the plot and the general ambience depicted here. The Forlorn Hope were a group of fifteen people who chose to break off from the original Donner Party and make the 100 mile hike to Sutter’s Fort in the Sacramento Valley in the middle of December…barefoot uphill both ways through ten feet of snow. Okay, yeah, I made that last part up, but it’s not too far from the truth.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that The Donner Party has nothing to do with the actual Donner Party at all, but let’s be honest: who wants to watch a movie called The Forlorn? It doesn’t grab the attention of morbid thrill seekers the way the words “Donner Party” do. You hear “Donner Party” and think: cannibalism. You hear “Forlorn” and think: “like, what does forlorn mean?”
December, 1846. Food is running low, game is scarce, the snow won’t stop falling, and no rescue party appears to be coming for the small band of pioneers trapped in the snow-covered Sierra Nevada foothills. William Eddy has been eking out a bare existence for himself, his wife, and their infant son by isolating them some miles from their traveling companions and keeping the lion’s share of the meat he finds for themselves. But his taciturn ways do not deter William Foster from sniffing around his camp, trying to convince Eddy to provide him with more food, and pressuring them all to join the others in his cabin. There’s no love lost between the rugged Eddy and the privileged Foster, but stubborn as Eddy may be, he’s not stupid. He knows that his wife and son will die unless they receive outside help. So it is with great reluctance that Eddy agrees to accompany Foster, Foster’s wife, and several others on a treacherous trip down the mountainside in search of civilization.
But when their guide dies, the party becomes hopelessly lost. And when Foster gets his first taste of human flesh, more is not enough. Soon, the meat provided by altruistic acts of suicide and natural causes lead to murder, and murder to madness. The situation declines into the most literal example of “eat or be eaten”, and Eddy has to make a painful choice: return to his family and die, or continue on and become lunchmeat?
No, this is not the most historically accurate version of actual events ever portrayed onscreen, but then neither was 1987’s The Untouchables. Nor can The Donner Party be called “entertaining”, although you may well ask how a movie about cannibalism can ever be entertaining, at which point I would point you in the direction of Antonia Bird’s 1999 Donner-inspired Ravenous. Unlike Ravenous, The Donner Party is without a shred of humor. It is bleak, hopeless, and terribly depressing. There are no heroes or happy endings; however, there is Crispin Glover in a stunningly subdued performance as William Foster.
I’ve become so accustomed to watching Glover tear up the screen like a monkey on a cupcake that it was disconcerting to say the least to see him so restrained here. He is very obviously playing the bad guy, but he plays Foster as human first and evil second. His Foster is a piously mincing wimp who dislikes work, loves his wife, rarely raises his voice, and is never more evil than when he whispers.
Glover’s performance is amazingly the sanest and most likable. Clayne Crawford as Eddy is too whitebread-bland Ryan Phillipe-in Crash to be really likable, and hearing him referred to as “Mr. Eddy” throughout the film is distracting as I kept waiting for Mrs. Livingston to show up and inquire about “Mistah Eddy’s Fadaah” at any given moment. Mark Boone Junior chews the scenery like it’s stale venison jerky and the rest of the cast is reduced to a literal cattle call, mutely and obediently following along up the slaughterhouse chute.
Long story short: if you want historical accuracy, read George Stewart’s Ordeal By Hunger. If you want entertainment, watch Ravenous. And if you’ve always dreamed of being eaten by Crispin Glover, this movie might just be your dream come true.
