Reel Injun

2009 documentary

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A look at how Native Americans have been shown in movies from Edison's early film experiments to  Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first Inuit-made film. 

"We cheered for the cowboys, never realizing that we were the Indians." 

I don't know for sure, but I think I heard Philip Glass in there somewhere. And a little Nick Drake. I was pretty sure I was going to be annoyed with Neil Diamond (not that Neil Diamond) who co-wrote and co-directed this with Catherine Bainbridge. The guy was on screen as much as Michael Moore in one of his films. However, he stays out of his own way for the most part. The overall message of this isn't anything new, but it was a great tour of how Native Americans were treated on film, from the first moving images of Thomas Edison featuring some dancing Natives Americans, through the 1920s when natives were seen as heroic and noble, into the 1930s and on when John Wayne and John Ford (blamed a little too much here, I think) turned them into villainous stereotypes, into the 70s when perceptions were starting to change in films like Little Big Man and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and to the present day when films about Native Americans are being made by Native Americans. It's a wealth of information. Did you know, for example, that Crazy Horse's name was really Crazy Horse? It was closer to Horses with Spirit, and every photograph of the guy is probably a fake since he would never allow his photograph to be taken. Did you know that Pocahontas should have been nine years old in the Disney movie? Did you know that Iron Eyes Cody, most recognizable as the guy crying about some litter in the famous commercial, was Italian? You probably do know the story of Marlon Brando sending a Native American gal to accept his Oscar for The Godfather as a protest for what was going on at the Pine Ridge Reservation, but it's cool to see that stuff. Did you know that you can get John Wayne toilet paper in Monument Valley? There's a lot of this that's amusing, and a lot that's very very sad. In the former category, you get a discussion of the "Rez car," like a Native American hooptie, a movie with white guys in red face and language created with backmasking, and a clip of Bugs Bunny saying, "That one was a half breed." Well, maybe that last thing belongs in the "very very sad" category with the depressing story of Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance who starred in The Silent Enemy, a silent movie with real native actors, but who later committed suicide after it was revealed that he was one-third black. Along the way, there's plenty from shane-movies favorite Chief Dan George, scenes from a "Native American" camp for boys that are so ridiculous that I can't believe they're real, and an interview with a stunt man with messed-up teeth that is entertaining because of how intense the guy is. Jim Jarmusch and Clint Eastwood also make appearances. Very entertaining, informative, and important documentary. 

"Chuck Connors as Geronimo? That's like Adam Sandler as Malcolm X!"