Missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls is a topic I know mostly from listening to CBC News. The lack of interest from police forces is rather appalling.
Through Black Spruce is a film adaptation of Joseph Boyden's novel of the same name.
Annie Bird and Susanna Bird are identical twins, Cree women from Moosonee, Ontario. Susanna is a model who took off to Toronto with her abusive boyfriend Gus. Annie is a homebody who feels more comfortable hunting than posing.
Susanna turns up missing. Her mother gets a lawyer in Toronto who doesn't do much to find Susanna. Annie gets invited by a local friend to go to Toronto on vacation, Annie is reluctant to go but ends up staying behind to look for her sister.
As the search goes on, Annie takes on the persona of Susanna, whom we only see in 2-dimensional pictures. The transformation reminded me of re was a bit of Jack Nicholson's identity transformation in The Passenger (1975) from Michelangelo Antonioni. Tanaya Beatty succeeds with the heavy responsibility in playing the sisters.
The other subplot involves their Uncle Will (Brandon Oakes). Marius thinks Will is a snitch of their local drug dealing. Marius and his gang think Will knows where Susanna is hiding. The irony is that so many Indigenous females are truly missing but somehow this is the lone exception. Who said drug dealers were smart.
At one point, Will escapes to a nearby island. That tale could have been a film on its own and feels like a necessary escape from the big city of Toronto and the big village of Moosonee.
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Don McKellar takes long chunks in the middle of the film to explore each storyline and then uses smaller chunks toward the end of the film. The segments seem pretty long in the middle to where you might forget about the other story. His veteran director experience builds up a proper level of momentum that matches the tone in the film. McKellar makes a cameo in the film.
Tantoo Cardinal and Graham Greene have small poignant roles. The cast also includes Parveen Kaur and Roseanne Supernault.
Through Black Spruce showcases the dual identities of living as an Indigenous person within their own society and living in the white people society. Annie and Susanna are obvious but Uncle Will also wrestles with these different worlds. The 2018 film offers us a complex portrayal of these divided lives in an engaging fashion.
Through Black Spruce received Canadian Screen Awards nominations for Best Actor (Oakes) and won for Best Original Score for Alaska B.
video credit: YouTube/D Films
photo credit: Through Black Spruce film
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