BY THE TIME WE GET TO PHOENIX by Kristian Lin
"How do we forgive our fathers?" That line, spoken by a voiceover narrator, comes toward the end of SMOKE SIGNALS, an accomplished and at times remarkable film. It's meant to be the movie's epigraph, but it could serve the same purpose for several other recent movies.
The movie starts when Victor Joseph (Adam Beach), a Coeur d'Alene Indian who lives on the reservation in Idaho, receives the news that his father, Arnold, has died in Phoenix. His nerdy friend Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) offers him the money for the trip from Idaho on the condition that he let Thomas go along with him. Victor doesn't like Thomas all that much, but he needs the money, so he reluctantly accepts. Arnold once saved the infant Thomas's life, and Thomas now idolizes him as a brash, colorful, bigger-than-life character. Victor, on the other hand, remembers him as an abusive, unpredictable drunk who abandoned his family.
SMOKE SIGNALS began as a book of short stories by Sherman Alexie. When Hollywood expressed interest in filming his screenplay adaptation, he held out for a Native American film director. With Chris Eyre, he made the right choice. The pacing is deliberate, providing the properly relaxed, open-road atmosphere that lends itself to Alexie's tiny, sharp insights. He isn't afraid to take stylistic chances, but he finds a nice balance between fantasy scenes and the movie's smaller-scaled moments.
Hollywood often uses Native Americans as symbols, or occasionally as slyly comic figures who play on white people's ignorance of them. It's sad, though, that we needed Native American filmmakers to portray Native Americans who don't behave as if they're from another planet. These characters are firmly placed in American pop culture, even as they're given a bemused, detached attitude towards it. Victor and Thomas's worm's-eye point of view makes their references to Michael Jordan and the DEATH WISH movies so breezily amusing.
SMOKE SIGNALS is like GOOD WILL HUNTING in that both movies are best at depicting the banter of guys hanging out. Critics have already given their dues to the chant of "John Wayne's teeth" and Thomas's praise of Victor's mother's frybread, but there's also stuff like the story of Arnold getting his picture in the paper, or Thomas's shirt that reads "Frybread Power." Evan Adams, in particular, deserves some credit - he seems carried away by his own narrative sense when he gives voice to the stories.
But it isn't just the tone that these movies share. Like Will Hunting, Victor's a strong, silent type who's crying on the inside because of his father's abuse. SMOKE SIGNALS, though, tops GOOD WILL HUNTING in that the father isn't just a shadowy, fairy-tale monster. He's a complex character who's carrying around his own pain. Seen in flashback (and played brilliantly by Gary Farmer), Arnold is a troubled shell of his former fun-loving self. He's still capable of real warmth and inspires the love of his neighbor Suzy (an incandescent Irene Bedard). His telling a story of Victor's performance in a basketball game results in a bravura scene that's worthy of the inspired heights of Spike Lee's HE GOT GAME. Arnold's pride in his son infuses the whole screen with an electricity that results in a great, thrilling moment.
Eyre's film also dares to suggest that exorcising one's demons is a somewhat complicated process. Will Hunting achieves catharsis because his therapist keeps telling him, "It's not your fault." (Hell, if that's all it took to cure him, "Saturday Night Live's" Stuart Smalley could have done the job.) Eyre and Alexie leave Victor's healing incomplete at the movie's end. Neither film reaches the level of HE GOT GAME - Spike Lee takes things a step further by daring to make Jesus Shuttlesworth emotionally functional in spite of his father's neglect - but Eyre's movie is mostly and refreshingly free of the self-pity that pervades GOOD WILL HUNTING.
SMOKE SIGNALS boasts a veritable all-star lineup of Indian actors. As Victor's mother, Tantoo Cardinal has the soft radiance and authority of a Susan Sarandon. Michelle St. John and Elaine Miles (from TV's "Northern Exposure") are a daffy pair of girls who cruise the reservation in a car that's apparently stuck in reverse. It goes to show that there is a talent pool of Native Americans that has been scandalously underused by Hollywood casting directors. Anglo actor Tom Skerritt also gets a spicy cameo as a local sheriff.
In the end, SMOKE SIGNALS is a film that reinforces what we should already know - everyone has a story to tell. I was planning on ending this piece by expressing the hope that this movie would spur Native Americans and people from other minorities to film their experiences. I still have that hope, but a movie this good doesn't need that kind of hook. It's a highly enjoyable road picture told from a different point of view, and that's reason enough to make it out to your art-house theater to see it.
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