Tag: American Indians

Rookie FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) enlists the help of game tracker, Cory (Jeremy Renner).

WIND RIVER

Film Review by Marlene Ardoin

Taylor Sheridan, writer/director of last year’s “Hell or High Water,” appears to champion women in “Wind River.”

Sheridan points out how young, American Indian women get raped and disappear regularly, with no records to verify the crimes.

In the film, we discover that there are at least three young women, who have met this fate. There appears to be a serious cockroach infestation in the area.

So, who do the FBI send? A female FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) from Las Vegas, or is it Florida, is sent to Wyoming.

Jeremy Renner plays Cory Lambert, an effective and sharp-shooting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker. It appears that wild animals, who prey on livestock, are kept better track of than rapists and murderers on the reservation.

Rookie FBI special agent Jane Banner (Olsen) needs lessons on how to survive in the brutal Wyoming winter weather, and Cory (Renner) helps her out, so she enlists his help in her investigation.

The investigation leads us to an oil rig community, who are raping the reservation lands in yet another way.

The brother of the raped girl, Chip (Martin Sensmeier), is an addict, living in a trailer on the reservation. The impotence of the American Indians appears to be generational. Wyoming lands are a brutal and a hopeless place for the offspring.

In the script, Cory (Renner) chastises Chip for not doing more with his life. He tells him that he could have gone into the services or to college.

His sister, Natalie (Kelsey Chow) , seemed to have a happy high school life, according to the pictures of her.

But, as soon as she leaves school, at 18, she is released from any adult instruction or direction. I guess this is what happened to her brother, Chip, as well.

Back to our female FBI agent, she proves that she has as much grit as she has humility in her situation.

The one thing that rubbed me the wrong way, was the graphicness of the rape scene as it unfolded. The situation was believable and just a little bit too pornographic for my taste, which seems to be a Sheridan signature move.

Is Sheridan suggesting that the American Indians are to blame? Or, is there something wrong with how the US government deals with the American Indian population?

Either way, the American Indians are portrayed as victims. Why can’t they be the heroes in this story? And why does the director choose non-American Indians to play their roles?

By hero, I do not mean running six miles barefoot in the snow.

If there is one thing the American Indians do not need, it is another tale of how badly they have become victims.

Bio of writer/director Taylor Sheridan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Sheridan

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9/12/2017 # Wind River

The Revenant - Bear scene

DiCaprio fights off mother bear.

The Revenant - Indian horse scene

DiCaprio is saved by Hikuc and his horse.

THE REVENANT

By Marlene Ardoin

The Revenant does satisfy the diversity question. The American Indian issues could easily be replaced by the African American issues. The most important question raised is whether self-survival is a good enough reason to take away the rights of others. The American Indians did nothing wrong. The white man just wanted their land and their animals. The settlers lost their own humanity in the process.

In today’s era of the selfie, it is not hard to imagine oneself as the center of the universe, rather than a shared universe.

At some point, Americans need to admit that what settlers did to the American Indians and the African Americans was not worthy of our American ideals. All we need to do is to see things from the perspective of the American Indians/African Americans. What would we have done in their situation? I guess we will keep seeing films like this until we see change in our current society. I am really tired of hearing about unarmed Black men being shot by police and of minorities being the larger part of the prison population.

I am glad that Leonardo DiCaprio is getting the accolades. Apparently, the filming of this movie was really punishing. On his experience filming, DiCaprio stated: “I can name 30 or 40 sequences that were some of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do. Whether it’s going in and out of frozen rivers, or sleeping in animal carcasses, or what I ate on set. [I was] enduring freezing cold and possible hypothermia constantly.” DiCaprio deserves the Oscar just for his endurance.

What stands out in this film is the kindness and humanity of the Indians, and the inhumanity of the settlers. Mexican film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu could be a bit biased. There are good and bad in all groups of people. However, no one can deny his genius and command of the genre. His 2006 “Babel” and 2010 “Birdman” show that “Revenant” is not just a one trick pony act, as a director. He deserves our respect for the great work that he has produced.

Tom Hardy, who plays John Fitzgerald, a trapper who kills Glass’s (DiCaprio) son Hawk, also suffered a close call to death. He apparently nearly lost his life to scalping, by the Indians. If my memory is correct, it was the settlers who were scalping Indians for cash. (Connecticut and Massachusetts colonial officials had offered bounties initially for the heads of murdered indigenous people and later for only their scalps.) Anyway, if he nearly lost half his scalp, he must have had someone nurse him back to life. Hello!!

This film is inspired by the experiences of frontiersman and fur trapper Hugh Glass in 1823 Montana and South Dakota.

A revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. That about sums up this film.

3/11/2016 # The Revenant