"Big truck just went by...and now it's gone." That is our introduction to the Coeur d'Alene Reservation in rural Idaho. The man announcing the unique traffic patterns is a traffic correspondence for K-REZ radio, where the announcer claims "it's a good day to be indigenous." 8:00 AM, Indian Time. A couple of cars also go by, we're told. One with an old lady speeding, another with a young couple arguing. It all sounds like a bad joke in a poorly written film, but it's played quite well.
Smoke Signals seems to have been marketed as a coming-of-age drama that would visualize what life really was like for Native Americans. Its trailer proudly announces that it's the first film made entirely by Native Americans, and Don LaFontaine, the trailer guy and "voice of God", certainly sets the tone: "When Victor's father walked out ten years ago," he says, "he left behind a burning secret that consumed his family. Now, Victor is about to leave the reservation for the first time on a search for the ways of his tribe, the importance of family, and the truth about his father." Okay, sure, but that's fairly bad marketing, and if the film had played out that way, it would have been a bad film.
True, Smoke Signals has its dramatic moments, but it successfully marries comedy and drama. We find an example almost immediately: During the Fourth of July, a terrible fire breaks out after 3:00 AM. Rare films could pull off a house burning down and killing the people inside while taking place during what the narrator tells us is White People's Independence Day.
The only survivor of the fire is a baby named Thomas, who was thrown from the window and caught by Arnold (Gary Farmer), a family friend. There are some children who aren't children at all, we're told by the narrator, Thomas. Some are pillars of ash, some are of flame. Some are both. That's how Thomas views both himself and Victor, Arnold's son. Victor is athletic and handsome. Thomas wears goofy suits. Thomas, though, is not portrayed as the bullied typically are.
Thomas is awkward and loquacious, to say the least, but he's not afraid to retort with an equally mean comment. Victor cruelly brings up the fiery deaths of Thomas' parents, and yet Thomas, after pausing and quickly collecting his thoughts, calmly brings up the fact that Victor's father Arnold, an abusive drunk, likely will never come back after abandoning them. In addition to his wit and humor, Thomas is a fantastic raconteur, even if he embellishes his stories. He is played as a teenager by Evan Adams and as a young boy by Simon Baker, and both are quite good portrayals. So too are the two playing Victor: young Cody Lightning and as an adolescent by Adam Beach, probably the most successful indigenous North American actor these days (even though he was criminally misused in last year's Suicide Squad). The film frequently switches back and forth between when Thomas and Victor were children and to the present day, where Victor reluctantly agrees to let Thomas accompany him to Arizona (because he needs his money) to retrieve the ashes of the recently deceased Arnold. But where there's smoke, there's fire, as they say.
The simplest definition of a smoke signal might come from Wikipedia, which notes that they are used to "transmit news, signal danger, or gather people to a common area." Not to hunt too obviously for themes, but while Smoke Signals isn't so much a coming-of-age tale, it certainly is one of growing friendships and bringing opponents together, as well as dealing with sins of the father, as Victor is forced to do. Aside from that, the film seems to have embraced its role in delicately acknowledging the troubles Native Americans continue to face without being too stereotypical. Sherman Alexie, himself Spokane-Coeur d'Alene, adapted the screenplay from his series of short stories called The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and his father, like Arnold, was an alcoholic who abandoned his family. Alexie deserves praise for a fine screenplay, which is, again, better as a comedy than as a drama. It pokes fun at a variety of topics, like how Indians are supposed to look stoic as if they've just killed a Buffalo. "But our tribe never hunted buffalo," Thomas points out. "We were fishermen." Victor is not impressed. "This ain't 'Dances With Salmon', you know."
That's sort of an elephant in the room: the Oscar-winning romanticized epic, Dances With Wolves, the film that marked a turning point away from more controversial depictions of Native Americans. But that film is still a bit problematic, bathing itself in public curiosity of Native American culture that Smoke Signals rolls its eyes at. As professor Joanne Hearne pointed out in her book "Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising", a year after Dances With Wolves won Best Picture there was a subsequent public discussion regarding representation of Native people and Europeans during the Columbus Quincentennary. "The questions that emerged during that public conversation," she wrote, (like, Why is there a public celebration at all?) are issues that Smoke Signals raises with equal intensity in its focus on another calendrical marker, U.S. Independence Day celebrations."
Some allegories, like two white passengers taking Thomas and Victors' seats on the bus and refusing to give them back, are a little too ostentatious. But overall it's fine. Among the best performances are Beach and Adams, but especially Farmer in what is probably his best work, though the story is arguably too sympathetic to his character. Supporting this screenplay and the actors delivering its lines is a creative sound design. Smoke Signals was not mesmerized by the public in the era of Titanic, but in terms of film made of and by indigenous people, it will have a long legacy. Beyond its place in history, it's a splendid depiction of universal ideas like friendship, hardship, and coming to terms with familial reality.
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