Smoke Signals Movie Analysis

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After watching Smoke Signals I was pleasantly surprised. The movie, launched in 1998, was mostly directed, produced and performed by Native Americans. The plot focuses mainly on the road trip Victor (Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) have to go on after Victor’s father, Arnold (Gary Farmer), passes away; during that trip Victor is forced to deal with all the resentment and unresolved feelings he had towards his father for leaving his family years back. Although the road trip/buddy movie structure is not to be considered groundbreaking, the ‘Indian’ factor certainly is - because Indians have been wrongly depicted in the movie industry for decades, it’s interesting to see Native Americans be accurately represented on a contemporary …show more content…
For one, during the bus ride, Victor seemed to concentrate more on the fact that Thomas didn’t look ‘like a real Indian’ and making people’s lives miserable (i.e. that poor gymnast) than on the fact that his estranged father was dead. I grant that those might be coping mechanisms, but still found it odd. A character that really bothered me was Suzy Song (Irene Bedard); I believe the role she played in the story was crucial for Victor to be able to make peace with his father and know him better, even after he died, but I found her character inconsistent. At first, she presents herself as a neighbor, but when Victor and Thomas get there, she reveals that she really knew him and was a really good friend - or even a romantic interest - but when Arnold dies, she only finds him days later which doesn’t make sense if they were really close like she leads on. Furthermore, I felt like the scene where they get involved in a car accident and the following scenes in the hospital and the police station were unnecessary. They really didn’t add anything to the plot and it seems like they were only added to make the movie longer and make us hate that drunk guy. Maybe because the movie was based on short stories, the director/producers decided to include that (?). Nevertheless, I absolutely loved the ending of the movie and the poem How Do We Forgive Our Fathers? By Dick Lourie. I thought it was very fitting to the situation and it really focused on some of the main themes, which I believe are universal and therefore very relatable to most
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