Haller Lake United Methodist Church

2008 Lenten Faith and Film Series

Saturday, February 16, 2008

The Film:  Smoke Signals

(1988; rated PG-13; length of viewing: 88 minutes)

   
   
Preparation Helps
What follows is from Robert K. Johnston, from the book, Finding God in the Movies: 33 Films of Reel Faith, © 2004 Catherine M. Barsotti and Robert K. Johnston.
Billed as the first feature movie entirely written, directed and acted by Native Americans, Smoke Signals was adapted for the screen from four short stories by Sherman Alexie out of his collection, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven … The film opens on the Fourth of July, 1976.  It tells the tale of two modern-day Coeur d’Alene Indians, Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, who twenty years later leave their Idaho reservation to go by bus to retrieve the ashes of Victor’s alcoholic father. 
Through the use of storytelling so typical of Indian culture, Smoke Signals weaves together fantasy and realism in a series of flashbacks and fast-forwards, often narrated by Thomas.  In the process not only are Thomas and Victor able to accept their past and present, but we as viewers are better able to discover our stories as well.  The director, Chris Eyre, says the movie is a “universal story about fathers and friends and forgiveness.”  He has used the tradition he knows best (Native American), but the movie is meant to transcend culture.  Its final soliloquy is a moving voice-over of a poem by Dick Lourie: 
How do we forgive our fathers?
Maybe in a dream …
Do we forgive our fathers in our age or in theirs?
Or in their deaths?
Saying it to them or not saying it? …
If we forgive our fathers, what is left?
Smoke Signals is more than just a metaphorical story with universal meaning; it is also a Native American movie.  The movie is political despite itself;  it is about getting to know the American Indian in our midst.  We are shown typical ways that Native Americans have learned to cope with the largely indifferent if not hostile world around them -- anger, story-telling, alcohol, and community.  In Smoke Signals, no overarching answers are presented, but insight is achieved nevertheless.  And we do get a glimpse of the neighbor in our midst. 
 
Questions for Discussion and Reflection
  1. This film is a road-trip movie.  Examples of this type include The Wizard of Oz, Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, and Finding Nemo.  In the course of taking a journey from one physical location to another, the characters discover new things about themselves and the world.  Christians think of the Christian life as a journey.  The two themes of road-trip and journey (including the return journey) interact in complex ways. 
  2. Along the journey, the viewer is presented with various ways of dealing with loss and death.  Consider the various characters and their ways of coping.  With which character do you most empathize, and why? 
  3. What difference does it make that this is a Native American film?  How does it help us to see beyond the stereotypes of American Indians present in other films?  How does it use humor in this regard to re-educate the viewer as to the struggles of Native Americans?
  4. How important is it that Thomas’s stories are not always based on facts but instead are woven together from his life experience and his imagination?  Is there still truth in the fiction he creates?  Is this a uniquely Native American perspective, or more universal?  How have the people of God through the centuries viewed story?