Smoke Signals (1998)
A film review by Mark O'Hara
"Do you want lies, or do you want the truth?" Suzy Song asks Thomas Builds-the-Fire.
"I want both," Thomas (Evan Adams) replies.
This is one of the layers of meaning in Chris Eyre's film SMOKE SIGNALS. As much as anything, it's about the thrill of a good story, the importance of stories in our lives and especially in our individual pasts. As Thomas tells his stories he holds very still, eyes closed, head tilted toward the heavens. For him it's a religion of narrative, telling tales about his life and friends, not bothering to separate out the threads of falsehood from the fabric of his accounts. Evan Adams delivers probably the strongest performance in the work, his voice full of inflection and poetry, his tone the perfect mix of seer and nerd.
His friend Victor Joseph is the only one who complains about Thomas' stories. Victor (Adam Beach) has lived on the Idaho reservation all his life, growing up with Thomas, hearing the same stories endlessly. What bothers Victor the most is that Thomas idolizes Victor's father Arnold, who deserted the family when the boys were ten. It was Arnold (Gary Farmer) who saved the infant Thomas from the fire that killed Thomas' parents; Arnold who took the orphan to Denny's and bought him the Grand Slam breakfast. But it was Victor who had to live through his father's alcoholic flights of fancy and through the dark days of abuse.
The main premise turns the film into a travelogue in which the adult Victor and Thomas ride a bus to Arizona to retrieve the ashes of Arnold. On the journey there and back they meet people and situations that change them, and show the viewer much about contemporary attitudes toward Native Americans.
When William Faulkner said, "The past isn't dead. It's not even past," he was talking about the kind of suffering Victor and his mother, Arlene Joseph, have been undergoing. Using flashbacks that melt instantly into scenes of the present, the film takes the type of risks that ensure the success of stories. Victor displays an appropriate anger toward his now-dead father, and we even excuse his unfair treatment of the lovable, eccentric Thomas. A straight-talker, Victor is aware of the prejudices that still stalk Native Americans, especially two long-haired young men venturing off the reservation and into the "foreign" country of the United States. In a scene in which unshaven white men take Victor's and Thomas' seats on the bus, we are shown traces of hate in even the most common experience. Perhaps Victor learned a modicum of hate himself from his father, who wished to make the white man disappear. In a fascinating motif involving magic, it is Arnold who makes himself vanish, accomplishing yet another feat that he "didn't mean to."
SMOKE SIGNALS is weak in its overuse of things Indian. Although Thomas' voice-over at the start and finish is well-written, it sets a tone that touches upon countless cliches. We hear allusions to the oral tradition (Thomas's storytelling), to George Armstrong Custer, John Wayne and Tom Mix, to the stoic face a Native American must turn to his troubles. Yes, these elements are part of the culture, and some very humorous use is made of them. But the film's greatness does not hinge upon their repetition. Rather, the human elements cause the success: Victor's long journey and change of heart, Thomas' unfailing friendship and goofy smile, Suzy Song (Irene Bedard's) decency and determination to help.
Touted as the first major film written, produced and directed by Native Americans, SMOKE SIGNALS came away a favorite at the Sundance Film Festival. With a screenplay by Sherman Alexie (based on his book of stories THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN), the film acts ultimately as an ode to the relationships between fathers and sons, as well as to the love visible in acts of kindness.
I was grateful to have the chance to see SMOKE SIGNALS in the only cinema in our small midwestern city. It seems the university is requiring all incoming freshman to read Alexie's book, and is sponsoring a visit by Alexie in just a few days. Now I do not have to worry about finding a video store that carries independent art films. Now my son and I have been enriched by witnessing a part of the world different than ours.
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