I have read some of Sherman Alexie's work, although admittedly not "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven." I don't want to ruin a movie that I enjoyed so thoroughly by loving the book more. In any case, I think that this film is largely misunderstood. Non-Indian people tend to look at this film as a "coming of age" story about finding Victor finding not only his father, but himself as well. Yes, that's there, but there is so much more. For example: the very real and very sad quality of life on the rez. The ones who are fortunate enough to have a car don't care if it drives in reverse only. The kids watch their parents drinking, and often grow up to drink with them. Alcoholism is a very real disease that affects everyone associated with an alcoholic...and it runs rampant throughout many reservations. Imagine knowing that once you had so much, and now are only allotted a certain patch of a certain number of acres; imagine knowing that more than half of your history was oral tradition and people made you stop speaking your native language. Imagine the elders watching the children grow up to try to be white and fail, and imagine them watching their history slip away with every word or nuance forgotten. Imagine the desperation of a people as a whole and individually to have so much and really have nothing at all. That, I believe, is the underlying theme in Smoke Signals. The title alone is a cryptic message from Alexie: smoke signals were used to communicate across open plains, plains now destroyed and whithered as though a fire raged across them, which it did in the form of the white man. Victor's father died in a fire, perhaps sending his spirit up in the form of a smoke signal to his gods. And Thomas' narration at the beginning is about children born of fire and ash. Watch this movie again and again, and see how so many suffer...
Review of Smoke Signals
