Pow Wow Highway
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Movie Reviews of Pow Wow Highway
Movie Review: powwow highway
Summary: 5 Stars
I liked this movie years when I first saw it in vhs.So I was glad to order it on dvd for my collectionMovie Review: great movie
Summary: 5 Stars
One of my old favorites and now glad to own it! Quality of product was recieved as advertised.Movie Review: My pony flipped me!
Summary: 4 Stars
Not my usual film fare, I happened to bump into this film by accident and I'm glad I did. While my knowledge about Native American culture is anything but comprehensive, I found myself swept along 'Pow Wow Highway.' A touching and funny peek into the reservation blues that are part and parcel of the American 'Indian' experience, this film touches all who take a chance on it.
This could have another been another Smoke Signals, poignant and light-hearted, but this film has more meat to it. The reason: the very meaty and lovable Gary Farmer. Farmer's heart-warming performance as Philbert Bono---overweight warrior on his own vision quest---is reason enough to watch this film. Farmer's character doesn't say much nor does he need to. Every stare, twinkle in the eye, and puckish smile tells us everything we need to know.
The film starts off with Philbert daydreaming in his reservation's junk yard. The ugliness of reservation reality surrounds: flimsy mobile homes and trashed-out cars, but Philbert sees beyond all that. He spies himself his 'war-pony,' a rusted-out '64 Buick and saddles up for his adventure. His quest is to become a true Cheyenne warrior. Things don't start off so smoothly as Philbert's childhood friend, the angry young AIM-er, Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez), sets out to rescue his sister. Caught with weed in her car, Red Bow is determined to set her free from the hayseed Anglo cops of the Santa Fe PD. Thus begins Red Bow and Philbert's journey of self-discovery. A journey of finding out what it means to be Native American, and more importantly, what it means to be human. Like Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, Philbert and Red Bow represent two sides of the human coin: passion and reason. Red Bow is all anger and resentment against an Establishment that has robbed, raped and killed his people for over three hundred years. In every scene, we see the seething revolutionary ready to strike. At anybody. One of the film's funniest scenes is when the war pony needs a stereo. Confronted with a condescending salesman, they surprise him and buy the priciest stuff in the shop, shattering his 'impoverished Indian' stereotype. Soon installed in the pony, the new equipment doesn't seem to work, sending Red Bow into a rage, thrashing both shop and owner. And through it all, Philbert searches for and finds the problem: in the instruction manual. Think before you act. A clichéed lesson, but valuable all the same. This interplay between Philbert and Red Bow dominates the whole trip. Whereas Red Bow talks like a warrior, Philbert acts like one. With shrewdness, intelligence, dignity and most of all, humor, Philbert becomes the 'trickster' indeed, masking a deepness of character beneath his childish silliness. Red Bow bitches about the Pine Ridge Pow Wow being nothing more than 'drums in a gym,' while Philbert involves himself in every bit of his past he can. He beats the drum, he climbs the sacred Black Hills, he talks of Cheyenne legends over the CB, while Red Bow fumes and glooms. Red Bow even mistakes the Hills for 'somewhere outside Pueblo.' A grand faux pas. As a result, it is Philbert who becomes the real hero, the real warrior. His weapon is his quietly earned self-knowledge. With silent strength and subtle humour, he takes back what Red Bow with all his rebellion can't: an identity nearly destroyed through years of oppression and negligence. It is no coincidence that by the time they free Red Bow's sister (again, Philbert's doing), Philbert has transformed into his real self: Nightcloud Whirlwind, a warrior.
The beauty of this film is that is goes far beyond social history. Pow Wow Highway shows the wide range of 'types' in the Native American community from assimilated 'collaborator' selling tribal land to mining companies to the tortured and lost Vietnam veteran (brilliantly played by Graham Greene). So wide and rich is the film's parade of characters that we forget that this is supposed to be a 'Native American' film. We see friends and family in these characters and yes, eventually ourselves. And this I think was director Wack's goal: to break down the borders set up by our labels, Native American or otherwise.
While the ending is a bit too predictable and some characters never really get to fly (Red Bow's sister, the fellow AIM activist), Pow Wow Highway is well worth the watching. Follow Nightcloud Whirlwind as he proves the adage: its the quiet ones you need to watch out for.
Movie Review: A good snapshot of the Indian experience today
Summary: 4 Stars
I have a ritual of watching "Powwow Highway" once a year, usually around Christmas, as that is when the movie is set. The movie was produced by Beatle George Harrison's company, and I feel it offered many opportunities for Native American actors and musicians to get some notice.
As has been mentioned by other reviewers, actors Wes Studi (Heat; Mohicans) and Graham Greene (Thunderheart)were in the movie, as was activist, songwriter John Trudell. Pay some attention to the end-credits as they role and study the names. Many of them have done well since the 1989 filming.
As was mentioned elsewhere, musician Robbie Robertson (The Band), who has some Native American blood, provides some haunting and exciting songs from one of his solo albums (1987, I think). Native American fluist Carlos Nakai provides the opening musical sequence. Floyd Westerman, whom I met before he died, was the voice of a Native American trucker from Sturgis, SD, talking to Gary Farmer (who plays the lead character Philbert), lamenting the fact that today's Indian youth don't know anything about their legends or heritage.
I felt the the movie really touched on some important issues: the polluting of the Western lands, improper diet (Philbert lived on grease, beer, sweets and carcinogens), powwows on reservations, problems on reservations, such as alcohol abuse, alcohol-related killings, substandard housing and conflicts between AIM and the big-bucks corporate types). Leonard Peltier, a real-life figure currently in prison, was mentioned, as was Wounded Knee and the grim results of Vietnam at a person level (e.g., a mind-scrambled ex-POW Graham Greene).
Two touching scenes feature the travelers visiting Fort Robinson in the snow (where hundreds of Indians died needlessly) and where Philbert shares an Indian story about a husband searching for juicy plums in the stream and falling in, when the actual plums were above him all the time, within his grasp.
If you can get past the really foul, four-letter language of the movie, which really detracted from the movie, it's a pretty good one that still stands up after 19 years.
On a personal note, I missed seeing actor Gary Farmer in New York City a couple of years ago. I happened to be up there and had booked a flight home early that evening, meaning that I had to head out to the airport at about 3pm. I couldn't change the flight. That afternoon at one of the NYC museums, Farmer was scheduled to give a lecture on Powwow Highway after it aired. It would have been really great to attend that, as I've practically memorized the movie.
....Karl
Movie Review: As good now as when I first saw it.
Summary: 4 Stars
This was one of the first "Indian" movies I saw (other than the Billy Jack films), and this is the movie responsible for starting me on the path towards a love affair with Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and others. Although the look of some of the secondary characters is a little bit dated, and although the tone feels a little more paranoid to me then it did ten years ago, it still rings true. Gary Farmer gives a heartbreaking performance as a man-child trying to find his way, and an early powerful performance from Graham Greene easily catches the viewer off guard. Even though I had seen this film years ago, somehow his part had slipped from my mind, and I found myself near tears as watched this future great ratchet the emotional level of the movie to a higher place.