sonia | Neither Wolf Nor Dog

Went to see Neither Wolf Nor Dog at Vancouver's old time Kiggins Theater. (Summary linked, and quoted below.)

Can't remember the last time I saw a movie, in a theater or out of it. This one was sparsely attended, and therefore fragrance-free enough for me, yay.

This movie is worth seeing. It is much more up close and personal than the summary implies. The Native Americans are saying, "Look at me! Look at us! We are PEOPLE. These atrocities happened to me, to my family. See us!" The white guy is saying "privilegeprivilegeprivilege oh wait maybe I'll see you a little bit."

I'm so glad the Native American folks got to tell their stories and show their lives and landscapes. I hate that the story centers on the white guy's narrative. He's the one who changes as the Native Americans instruct him.

The cinematography and secondary part acting are bare-bones. For me, that emphasized that these are real people, this really happened, this is the landscape where it happened.

Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Kent Nerburn, this funny and deeply moving film follows an author who gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakotas by a 95-year-old Lakota elder.

Kent Nerburn (Christopher Sweeney), a goodhearted, white American family man and writer, receives a mysterious call from a distant Indian reservation regarding an oral history book he made with Red Lake Ojibwe reservation students in northern Minnesota. Despite misgivings, Kent travels across America’s northern plains to arrive at the bleak, poverty-stricken reservation deep in the high plains of the Dakotas.

The old man, Dan (Dave Bald Eagle), who lives alone in a clapboard shack back in the hills with his only real companions—his dog, a close friend named Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) and his granddaughter, Wenonah (Roseanne Supernault)—interrogates Kent as to his motives for working with Indian people. Once satisfied he is not a turquoise clad “wannabe” spouting Indian philosophy, Dan recounts the story of American history from the Native point of view. As the stories pour from Dan, Kent’s understanding of the world is turned upside down. An inanimate landscape comes alive, and a history he thought he knew is called into question.