HUM 221: 'Smoke Signals' -- reviews

For your viewing enjoyment, some reviews of "Smoke Signals," the 1998 movie based on Sherman Alexie's collection of short stories titled "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven."

From the Rotten Tomatoes movie review website, this plot summary:

Synopsis: Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-A-Fire are brought together by Victor's father who saves Thomas from a fire that destroys his house and kills his parents. In close proximity all their lives on the Coeur D'Alene Indian reservation in Idaho, the boys could not be more different. Victor is the extrovert who excels at basketball and Thomas is the savant who lives with his grandmother after the death of his parents. The journey the two young men take to the home of Victor's estranged father in far off Arizona brings out of the past the remarkable events that brought them together.

You can see how Alexie takes material from his life, changes it around and uses it his art.

This excerpt from the Siskel & Ebert review on TV June 28, 1998, featuring Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, sums up the way I feel from previewing parts of the movie:

Siskel: Obviously, Smoke Signals is not, in any way, a standard film involving Native Americans. These are very specific characters, but not every utterance and every event in the film revolves around their Indian heritage. The result is to expand our notion of just who Native Americans are and can be. This thoroughly entertaining film Smoke Signals could turn out to be a milestone in Native American cinema. It could become the equivalent of the black cinema's She's Gotta Have It by Spike Lee in terms of contemporizing characters. Obviously, I'm giving a strong recommendation to Smoke Signals.

Ebert: I loved it, too. I'll tell you, Gene, the interesting thing here is that, for once, I felt I was seeing real Native Americans everyday, talking to each other, living life, without all kinds of filters of history and tradition and archetypes and stereotypes between me and the screen. These are just two people.

Siskel: People first!

Ebert: And that was really refreshing. And the acting is lots of fun, especially the smaller of the two actors, who can't stop talking and is really engaging.

Just two people ... and people first ... and that is refreshing.

Janet Maslin's review in The New York Times (June 26, 1998) says the movie's stories "describe a contemporary American Indian culture coming to terms with its past in offbeat, unexpected ways. These range from casual asides about George Armstrong Custer to the patter of the reservation's radio station, where "It's a good day to be indigenous!" is a way to greet the morning."

Peter Travis, reviewing the movie in Rolling Stone (July 17, 1998), says:

When it comes to American Indians, Hollywood either trades in Injun stereotypes or dances with Disney. Forget that. Smoke Signals, written and directed by Indians, also casts Indians as Indians. "No Italians with long hair," says Sherman Alexie, 31, the Indian poet, novelist and short-story writer who brings a scrappy new voice to movies with his first screenplay. And what a comic, profane and poetic voice it is. Alexie risks pissing off the PC [politically correct] cavalry as he explores the humor and heartbreak of being young and Indian and living on a reservation ("the rez") at the end of the twentieth century.

Peter Stack, movie critic for The San Francisco Chronicle (Jule 3, 1998), said the movie "looks at Indian life in a down-to-earth yet irreverent way that focuses on its engaging characters." But more importantly, he adds, it "also clicks as an on-the-road adventure with Victor and Thomas playing off each other." Stack says:

The sullen, skeptical Victor is clearly annoyed by his sidekick's wacky stories and dorky way of dressing. He urges Thomas to get cooler clothes and affect a tough-guy swagger -- ``you gotta look like a warrior,'' he says.

But Thomas is an irrepressible spirit whose talk is more than nattering -- he has an uncanny ability to seize on wisdom at the same time he's going for a cheap laugh.

I think you could say the same thing about Sherman Alexie.