Smoke Signals

365 Films

Entry #135

Smoke Signals (1998)

Directed by Chris Eyre

             There was a time when I was not entirely distrustful of every hyped-up film that came out of Sundance and Smoke Signals continues to stand as a perfectly full-blooded example of all that the festival is capable of.  Touted as the first film ever written, produced, directed by and starring Native Americans, Smoke Signals held the promise for the arrival of several significant new voices on the independent film scene.  That several of those voices did not exactly flourish with their subsequent projects is more a testament to the harsh mistress that is the perpetual indie hype machine.  It’s a shame because more than being an announcement of new talent, Smoke Signals is an incredibly rich and giving film, the kind that seems to be welcoming you in for an afternoon visit.  That may strike some of you as the equivalent of a trip to blands-ville, but the fact of the matter is Smoke Signals is far from any such cynical accusations.  Richly steeped in Native American tradition but filtered through a modern and skeptical perspective, Smoke Signals invites you to laugh with and not mourn its characters.  From a narrative perspective, the tale is fairly straightforward and not unlike the typical indie projects that usually burst out onto the scene straight from Sundance.  You got your embittered father son relationship, a death in the family, and the subsequent road trip/last attempt at salvation, which is usually successful.     Where Smoke Signals succeeds and others have failed miserably is in its quiet commitment to capturing the pace and tempo of life in this particular part of the country.  A reservation where the rest of the United States is considered foreign territory, the Coeur D’Alene stands as a scrap of land populated by ghosts both living and those who have since passed.  As one character simply states in the film “you don’t need money on the reservation” and director Chris Eyre captures that knowing sense of isolation with a specificity that helps paint the individual story of a father and son on a much larger and more mythic Native American landscape.  The performances are all quietly heart-breaking in their own way, and Sherman Alexie’s screenplay, while a somewhat watered down version of his magnificent short stories, still captures the odd beats and humorous observations that occupy his best work.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget the line “12 years old, and he was like some kind of indigenous angel or something.' Cept maybe his wings were made out of TV dinner trays!” because it so elegantly encapsulates all that is special about Alexie’s writing.  Finally, I would be remiss to mention the cultural impact that Smoke Signals had not on the population at large but amongst my friends and I in high school.  Don’t ask me to explain it (other than the fact that we were a bunch of dorks, bear in mind I’m speaking only for myself here) but for some reason a film about Native Americans living on a reservation in Idaho some thousands of miles away really struck a chord with a bunch of dopey white kids living in Wilmington, Delaware.  We quoted it endlessly, I bought the screenplay and obsessively pored over every detail, and Thomas’ t-shirt even inspired a band by the name of Frybread Power.  I think that in and of itself is a testament to the lovely and generous spirit that pervades every frame of this film.  It’s full of heartache, loneliness, death, and alcoholism and but unlike every other Sundance brethren of its ilk, it never forgets to be about the people instead of their pain.