Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 01/27/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, January 27, 2024

Powwow Highway (Jonathan Wacks, 1988)

A Martinez and Gary Farmer in Powwow Highway

Cast: A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Amanda Wyss, Joanelle Romero, Geoff Rivas, Roscoe Born, Wayne Waterman, Margo Kane, Sam Vlahos, John Trudell, Wes Studi, Graham Greene. Screenplay: David Seals, Janet Heaney, Jean Stawarz, based on a novel by Seals. Cinematography: Toyomichi Kurita. Production design: Cynthia Sowder. Film editing: Jim Stewart. Music: Barry Goldberg.

If you like the series Reservation Dogs, you ought to like Powwow Highway. To my mind (white, male, aged) these comic works get closer to capturing the Native American experience than do more earnest movies like Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1994) and Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023), which rely too heavily on the white man's point of view. As the title suggests, it's a road movie, and as with any good road movie, the travelers are an odd couple. Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez) is a hot-tempered activist, trying to stymie the latest corporate takeover of land on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer) is a corpulent, easy-going eccentric, enthralled by Native American myths and legends. When Buddy's sister is arrested on trumped-up charges in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he persuades Philbert to drive him there to get her released. Philbert has recently acquired (via a trade for some marijuana) an ancient wreck of a car that he refers to as his "pony" and calls Protector. Despite Buddy's insistence on going straight to Santa Fe, he can't keep Philbert from getting sidetracked onto locations associated with Native American history. The result is an engaging blend of farce and travelogue, with a provocative, sometimes bittersweet point of view. Farmer's creation of the endearing Philbert, a fine blend of sweet and stubborn, of naive and canny, is a remarkable performance. Martinez has just the right hair-trigger quality as Buddy, and the supporting cast, which includes bit parts for the then-unknown Wes Studi and Graham Greene (particularly good as an aphasic Vietnam veteran), is wonderful. The "happy ending" is by-the-book, but well-deserved nevertheless.