![]() The newly discovered facts make them both look at their lives from another angle and reconsider everything that happened to them, making them close as never before. All their life was a rivalry full of jealousy towards one another – the tough, harsh Victor did not accept Thomas as a part of his life and his family. The realization of the truth makes both characters look at their life and their relations in another way, making them closer than ever before. The end of the film brings about an unexpected turning point for both Arnold’s sons, especially for Thomas – the boy who loved Arnold all his life for being saved from the fire finds out that Arnold was the initial cause of the fire that brought death for his parents. ![]() It is Victor, for instance, who accuses Thomas of having gotten his ideas of Indian behavior from too many viewings of ”Dances With Wolves” and advises him to quit grinning, start scowling and toughen up (Maslin). Victor is the bigger and sterner of the two, with Thomas as his screwball sidekick. The boys have been rivals and opposites ever since. ![]() The story of their trip is becoming much more complex and heterogeneous as the differences between Victor and Thomas are revealed in the course of the narrative: However, both guys as people deeply attached to their roots love their father dearly, which initiates their journey from the reservation to Phoenix, to get their father back home. They both love their father, but only Thomas knows his real inner self: it was Thomas who lived under one roof with his father for his whole life and suffered violence and humiliation, alcoholism, and the unexpectedness of his father (Smoke Signals). Their interrelations are very expressive from the point of view of their origin, with Victor being the native son of his father, and Thomas is an ‘adopted’ child, the saved boy whom Victor’s father rescued in his childhood. The director was trying to break the long-existing stereotypes about violent Native Americans incarcerated in their reservations and living according to their sacred, mysterious canons that do not fit in the commonly accepted social life – he depicted the two ordinary young men in the turning point of their life. In some points, the film shows their humoristic naivety, but in general, the film is highly depictive both from the point of view of purely individualistic traits and relations and the nationwide scope of the Native American perception. There is no doubt that the film is highly emotional, explores not only ethnic problems and discrepancies the two young men face in their pursuit of knowledge but the issues of identity, self-understanding, and coordination of the truth of life with everything they knew before.Ĭhris Eyre showed himself as a skillful creator of the genuinely Native American story seen with the eyes of two young guys traveling in the search of the remains of their father, who face the country they have never seen before but which they, nevertheless, want to get familiar with. “Though this is very much the first feature…, ”Smoke Signals” shows colorful style and a wisdom beyond precocity about its setting and its people” – the film got the following remarks from the New York Times journalist Janet Maslin (Maslin). Cast: Adam Beach – Victor Joseph, Evan Adams – Thomas Builds-the-Fire, Irene Bedard – Suzy Song, Gary Farmer Arnold Joseph.Director of Photography/Cinematographer: Brian Capener.
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