124 - Smoke Signals review

"You gotta look mean or people won't respect you. White people will run all over you if you don't look mean. You gotta look like a warrior! You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo!" says Victor Joseph (Adam Beach) to Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams). "But our tribe never hunted buffalo - we were fishermen," Thomas replies. Although their relationship doesn’t allow it to be acknowledged, in truth Victor doesn’t know anything more about being an American Indian than Thomas does, except for what TV and pop culture have taught them.

The protagonists in Smoke Signals may be Native American (or Indians, as screenwriter Sherman Alexie and I prefer), but outside of appearance and a few traditions here and there, ethnicity doesn’t define either. Their problems may be common to Indians, but to unfortunate members of all other social and ethnic groups as well. Alcoholism, abandonment, money troubles, and identity crisis’s plague their days.

Victor and Thomas are 22 and live on a reservation with their mother and grandmother, respectively. When Victor receives news that Arnold (Gary Farmer), his long estranged father, has died, he and Thomas (who essentially buys his way along) set off to retrieve the ashes.

Much like his father, Victor has a severe attitude problem. He hasn’t fallen into alcoholism, but lashes out at those around him, especially the nerdy Thomas. On the way, Thomas passes the time by telling tall tales, involving themes ranging from Vietnam protests to reservation banquets, which Victor bluntly dismisses as nonsense. They may be, but Victor misses the point; when one’s own life has been full of forced mediocrity and sadness, the tall tale becomes an effective coping mechanism.

The film treats the first part of their journey fairly plausibly. Victor and Thomas’ interactions manage to build character and background without being too obvious about it. The temptation to overplay their emotions is resisted, resulting in an authentic feel, such as when a brief comparison to Charles Brondon comes up, or Thomas’ memories of Arnold taking him to Denny’s. Their journey takes Victor to Suzy Song (Irene Bedard), his late father’s lover, and a revelation that isn’t sensationalist, but genuinely puts a new spin on the lives of the character.

Unfortunately, in lie of settling for the temperate, easy-going pace, the film eventually delves into a standard cinematic Final Dilemma, presumbaly because Alexie’s How to Write a Screenplay book sold him on the three-point formula that dominates the film industry worldwide. Victor’s change of heart at the close doesn’t feel entirely believable, but shoehorned in to give the film a softer tone by making the primary lead more sympathetic. One could argue that they have simply been given a real story to tell, but when observing the adherence to formula, I don’t buy it.

But perhaps I’m just prematurely jaded. Despite the routine nature of the story, Smoke Signals has a charm that does ring true. The characters may have glaring flaws, but so do all real people, which does ultimately allow for some degree of satisfaction at the resolution. One of the (if not the) reasons we watch movies is to get a glimpse into the lives of others. Smoke Signals allows a view into the sadly neglected contemporary American Indian experience, and though we’ve seen much of it before, the characters are new, and that’s more than many films can say.

3 out of 5