Re: its not a very good party is it?

You make several good points that I agree with. However, you missed on the 'putting into the pot' sequence. Mr. Foster was talking to Mr. Fosdick who was not hoarding food as you say. As others on this board have pointed out, putting into the pot meant that all must take part in cutting off human meat from the corpse of Patrick Dolan so that there would be a shared sense of responsibility for their desperate acts of eating human flesh. Mr. Eddy was the one who had been hoarding a stash of bear meat, put in his bag by his wife and discovered well into the trip by Mr. Eddy. Look back and you will see a scene where Eddy discovers it with a note from his wife. At the point where they have killed Dolan, no one had any food left. Eddy and Louis, are visibly sickened by what has happened and they break away from the group. They were in better shape at that point due to the bear meat that Eddy may have shared with Louis.(Although that was never shown, I would guess that Eddy would have given him some, if for no other reason than self interest). He would stand a better chance of survival with Louis to help him. The departure from history bothered me more than a little at first but I still came away liking this film. Watching it a second time confirmed this liking for me. There are no bad scenes and many very good ones. For the limited scope of the Donner story that TJ Martin covers, he did an amazing job. The music, camera work, acting and script are really good. This movie works in capturing the drama of the Forlorn Hope and its theme of trying to preserve humanity and hope in the face of the absolute worst case scenario. Straying from the true history is acceptable, as to tell the whole story was not possible. Martin had to choose what to put in and was free to change events or borrow things that may have happened at other points in the whole Donner epic. There was murder in the party. Reed killed Snyder, a teamster, in the Wasatch Range, and Kesseberg may have killed and eaten Tamsen Donner and perhaps a child back at the camps near Donner Lake. We just don't know what really happened. Others were left to die on the trail. Some were heroes like Stanton and Reed who led the efforts to make rescues. I expect a great future for TJ Martin and hope he gets noticed for his formidable skills. As someone who grew up hearing the stories of the Donner Party from my mother who grew up in Reno, Nevada, I am thrilled that someone made a film version of a least part of the story. It has been largely forgotten.