TemporaryOne-1
In his poems, Sherman Alexie alludes to the fancydance, or Shawl Dance (a dance of mourning), as being a recent and flashy invention, a dance designed to generate larger tourist audiences, and thus a sell-out dance. Seymour, a sell-out, but not really a sell-out, an irreversibly hurt boy who cannot live his life on the reservation because that life chained him down with things he did not want to be chained down with, he needed freedom, but in his freedom he allowed himself to be sold in order to survive. Selling-out for self-preservation. The movements of the dance emulate a woman mourning (for her husband lost in battle), she covers herself in shawl to symbolize taking refuge. Seymour does the opposite - he sheds his identity and walks away from his heritage for good. Seymour dancing also transgresses traditional gender roles (homosexuality and its persecution thereof in Native American culture)I want my father to be your father / I want my father's sins to be all sins / Because father's sins, children must forgiveSeymour is Hamlet. Hamlet is interpolated throughout, interpenetrating the film - cultural colonialism. Hamlet the White European versus Seymour the Native American. Caliban articulates indigenous grievances against oppositional colonial power, Seymour deployed against. Hamlet/Shakespeare to articulate Native American literary consciousness but Seymour has more in common with Hamlet than their differences. Colour of skin only difference. I don't think Sherman Alexie is using Shakespeare as a weapon against Native American self-articulation or identity or sovereignty. Invoking Shakespeare is an act of war. Difference between "smart" and "ignoramus". Invoking Shakespeare in the film's sense is to invoke the enemy's language. The language of the White European Colonialist Anglophone invoked and reinterpreted/reinvented by the Colonialized, the Victim. At least 35 lines are mined from Hamlet. Plot and themes and concrete dialogue, not a coincidence. Shakespeare the enemy, White Teachers, White Man, the oppressor's language engaged by the oppressed and transformed (thus breaking through colonial structures) by the oppressed into new language, new literature, new meanings. Hamlet/Shakespeare and Seymour/NativeAmerican, parallel yet distant and distinct worlds, both seemingly difficult to penetrate.Mouse's death, Seymour returns to reservation. Hamlet's The Mousetrap (play within play), to catch the conscience of the king. Hamlet alters a play entitled "The Murder of Gonzago" for his purposes, making sure the play mirrors Claudius' fratricide. Renames play The Mousetrap. A play staging the murder of his father. And he revises the play-within-the-play to create a new play in the middle of a play that is not only Hamlet-centric, but is also called Hamlet. The main character, a creation of X, also a victim of X, limited to X's designs, yet main character "takes control" and using the "weapon" of a play re-writes a play right back and retitles it to boot. Like Sherman Alexie taking control of Shakespeare/Whites to write something that gets even with Shakespeare/Whites. Play within a play, and in the film, viewers watching a poetry audience watching a poetry reading. Poems are open and free but the content traps our conscience and the audience-in-the-film's conscience, and Seymour's, too. And kills our consciences.Mouse - "O L-rd remember. O do remember me"--It's all lies, Ari. Those are my kittens. He took my life, man. All My Relations, it says. All my relations. It's all lies, man. . . . It's like I'm not even alive. It's like I'm dead."The Ghost Hamlet's Father to Hamlet, "Adieu, adieu, adieu. Remember me" (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 91).Hamlet was at college and returned to castle. Hamlet was out in the free world, enjoying the arts and theatre and music, perhaps full of the ego and pride and lust that attends individual, communal freedom. Much like Seymour living freely in Seattle, attending college and commencing with his literary career and sexual trials. Hamlet returns home to medieval rigid enclosed world. He must fall in line to authority. Returns home for father's funeral. Seymour returns home for friend Mouse's funeral, Mouse definitely a father-figure/wisdom-figure for him that he smashes and destroys because the truth hurts. Seymour and Hamlet, both victimized, confused, internally split, buffeted from all sides, both trapped by power structures that have obliterated their identities, both men contemplating a course of action that will almost certainly result in their respective deaths. Hamlet, dead for real, Seymour, death of his soul. Perhaps Sherman Alexie going for the Passion of the Messiah theme, another White Colonialist theme, pervasive in western philosophy and literature and the arts and culture, making Seymour the Jesus figure.Seymour drives home to the funeral, Shakespeare's most famous line appears at the reservation sign - "To be or not to be," and the phrase is sung Indian-style as the scene unfolds, with Indian musicality - looping pentatonic melodies spiralling over a steady pulsing drumbeat. The sign, "Welcome to the Spokane Indian Reservation." Seymour stoops down to brush away some branches covering the bottom corner of the sign, revealing two hand-written phrases - "Home of Seymour Polatkin"(his writing) and "Not anymore." (someone else's). Seymour's existence, a foundational paradox, just as Hamlet's speech, a foundational paradox. A second Seymour - the Ghost of Seymour - appears, two Seymours, Shakespeare's well-known and popular duality themes. Home but not home. But aren't intellectually talented individuals often forced to leave home in order to live how they need to live and succeed?Agnes/Rosencratz - then the whole world is a prison. Seymour/Hamlet - the whole world is a prison, with a million confines and wards and dungeons. The reservation's just the worst. Agnes/Rosencratz/Guildenstern - I don't think so. Seymour/Hamlet - You can think what you want. To me it's a prison. Agnes - Well, you've wanted to leave here since you were six years old. It's your ambition that made the rez a prison - slight deviation from play, but thenWord for word, slightly modernized syntax but word for word. Alexie owns Shakespeare.
gradyharp
While we as a country are discovering/acknowledging the struggles of the different sects within the Middle East, tribal differences that are longstanding and divisive and painful, along comes another sensitive story about Native Americans in this country and how the scars of past and ongoing abuses of our 'reservation resolution' have affected the original peoples of this land. Sherman Alexie, a fine poet and novelist, has transformed his written works into a film that showers the viewer with insights into a problem about which few are cognizant - intratribal differences that provide schisms within the only root that binds.Seymour Poltakin (the very talented Evan Adams) is a famous poet who happens to be both Native American and gay. He is called back to his Reservation in Spokane, Washington for the funeral of his childhood friend Mouse (Swil Kanim) only to confront all of the reasons he has left the Reservation for the 'white man's world' where he has found both financial and emotional success. Seymour's best friend Aristotle (Gene Tagaban) had originally left the Reservation to go to college with Seymour, but quickly soured to the prejudiced outside world and returned to his Reservation and to an unfortunate life of alcoholism and drug abuse. The bulk of the storyline revolves around how these two once devoted friends parted ways, the philosophies of each are explored, and though Seymour finds moments of love in his home space, he is still content to return to his white man lover and his life he has chosen.There are many very tender and moving moments in this film: when Seymour is in conversation with Agnes (Michelle St. John) and when Agnes intones the Indian chants and songs at the funeral; Seymour's dialogues with his lover; scenes of quiet while Aristotle abuses himself with drugs; the weaving in and out of the beautiful dancing that flows through the film. The problem with the movie is the disparity of approaches in telling the story: an interview situation between Rebecca Carroll and Evan Adams is well written but breaks the mood of the poetic form of the story. The film is obviously low budget and in this case, for this viewer, the rough hand-held camera technique adds a quality of reality to what we are watching.The overall effect at the end of the film is a pang of pain in the heart having witnessed the generations of 'isolation' and the segregation of the Native Americans into spaces both geographical and sociological that have undermined a tremendously valuable asset to our history. That role of shame is one that will never leave us, and it is a gift that artists like Sherman Alexie can bring this to the public's attention. Recommended. Grady Harp
Polaris_DiB
Sherman Alexie is simply an amazing writer. His poems are amazing, his movies are amazing... and yet I'm a white guy. How do I know how true they are to The Rez? Besides, how do Native Americans feel about his portrayal of them? After all, that's a very difficult matter to contend with. Some of the few Native Americans filmmakers that deal with this issue are often forced to purposefully make their movies self-conscious (including cameras in them, etc.) just to show that they recognize that their portrayal is still through a popular, Anglo ethnocentric medium. Besides that, Native Americans aren't just one group, one ethnicity... each tribe is a nation, and they all have separate constructions of their identity. One Indian nation may be represented well in a film, and it confuses the white viewer as to how Indians "really are" because other nations "aren't like that." Thus, this film. Sherman Alexie has bound to have suffered criticism for making Indians portray-able to white folk, and this movie shows a Native American writer who has forsaken his tribe in order to write all about it, keeping in mind that the pop culture needs a tragic Indian, one that's half-white in order to relate to the white community, one that's attracted to white people as well. The entire film is a series of mirrors reflecting it's own problem of identity, which most of the time becomes really tedious but this time is actually really well done.One of the ways he succeeds is in admitting the simple truth: writers are frauds. Their writing stems from real pain, but in the end they are all just pathological liars. They make up stories either to make themselves seem more interesting, or to pretend their pain is okay.And the pop culture eats it up while the ones that feel that pain are ignored.--PolarisDiB
brianowatkins
Those expecting another Smoke Signals should avoid this one. I was a big fan of Smoke Signals. Although the acting was fine, particularly from the star, Evan Adams and Michelle St. John, the film generally wanders around with a paper thin plot, leaving the actors without much to work with. While the movie has been heralded as innovative in allowing the actors to improvise, from my perspective it was disjointed and too heavily laden with flashbacks. The movie also ends abruptly, leaving the audience (here anyway) feeling cheated out of a story. It isn't bad enough to take anything away from Sherman Alexie's immense talent as a writer, but it shows that not all of his ideas translate well to film. Better luck next time.
