MOVIE REVIEW: Lost On A Mountain In Maine

I took my 10 year old granddaughter to see LOST ON A MOUNTAIN IN MAINE yesterday and she pronounced it the corniest movie she had ever seen. Full disclosure: I had tears in my eyes throughout the finale because I am a mom and a kid was lost!!!!

But really this book and the film bug the hell out of me for completely different reasons.

More full disclosure: I once taught 4th graders and have read this book aloud more than once as it was part of the Maine studies curriculum. Also, I have hosted the adult Donn Fendler (the lost kid) in my classroom to answer my students' questions. I always thought it was a poorly written book, and about as far from literature as one could get in a memoir even with a ghostwriter helping. But, I digress.

Katahdin is in the homeland of the Penobscot Nation and is considered sacred by indigenous people of this area. It is not a tourist attraction or a reason to get outfitted at L.L. Bean. 

This reality gets a passing mention in the film as the guide who loses Donn has already scared him around the campfire with a white boy's version of the Penobscot legend of Pamola, an entity alleged to live at the summit and to condemn those it encounters to wander alone for eternity. Like much traditional knowledge and culture of Native people, whites have tried repeatedly to appropriate Pamola over the years. Not being Penobscot myself, I cannot tell you how accurate the movie's version is -- but I can tell that it's quite likely completely inappropriate to use it as a ghost story to scare youngsters about to trespass on sacred ground.

Then there is the huge, huge, huge fuss made over a 12 year old kid from Connecticut being lost in the woods. Many before me have noted that if this was a 12 year old Indian kid or Black kid, the press and law enforcement agencies would have considered it a nothing burger.

In fact, in 1939 when the story takes place, Native children were being kidnapped regularly and either forced into boarding schools (you know, the ones with the mass graves of children out back) or adoption by a white family. They were beaten for speaking their Native languages. If female, they might be raped, murdered, or both -- and if their male relatives attempted to protect them, said relatives would be killed, too.

Georgina Sappier’s elementary report card after she was removed from her family and culture to be raised white. Photo by: Ben Pender-Cudlip from the documentary Dawnland

Needless to say, none of this is in either version of the book or the movie.

Then there is the movie's central plot line: dad has an epiphany after taking himself out of the search by running into a tree branch with his eye. What he realizes is that he was trying to make his twin 12 year old sons tough because "the world is a mess" (when is it not?) and as a result he forgot to just be their dad. He works too much and mom picks up all the slack but that's not what he regrets (or even acknowledges). He regrets presiding over the basic WASP early 20th century cultural indoctrination for males: keep a stiff upper lip and carry on as if you had no emotions other than anger (Donn's anger at his dad canceling a fishing trip is the reason he gets lost in the first place). A related theme that the movie goes out of its way to develop: if you are stubborn, that's a good thing.

Ok maybe Donn's stubborn will to live did help him survive nine days without much food or clothing. It certainly wasn't his intelligence. Time and again both he and dad appear to be challenged in basic logical reasoning.

And this is one of my biggest objections of all: this story teaches kids who are lost to take off on their own and keep moving. Which makes it impossible for searchers to find them!!! What kind of an idiot teaches his kids to do this? Why would Sylvester Stallone produce an entire film glorifying this approach without even one voice speaking up to say: if you get lost on an outing with a group, sit your ass down and wait to be found. If you're so cold you've got to move, run in place and flap your arms.

I did not take my 3 year old grandson to the movie but I did ask him afterwards what he thinks people are supposed to do if they get lost. Unsurprisingly, he knew the right answer. I will never take him to see this film nor will I take him to hike Mt. Katahdin. Because it is not for the likes of us.