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| 111 Dear Diary: Wooeee! Did the Canadians do a number on poor old Thomas Wolfe, or what? Go home young Indian man, go home. Hummm, our marketing kids might not like the sound of that. Note to Self: Make a film on the return of the Pilgrims to England? Who can we get to direct this with class? Must do lunch with Steven Spielberg. Still Number 1, Hollywood Medicine River f f f Jacki Rand When Indians go home following a long absence, you can be sure that the road will likely be as bumpy as the roads in Medicine River, a fictional reserve town set in westernCanada.Nooneknowswhattomakeoflong-lost returnees whose changed markings are fully observable to the home folks. Will, a long-lost Cree played by the ubiquitous Canadian actor Graham Greene, narrates his return to Medicine River to attend his mother’s funeral. When he arrives, he finds that his mother’s funeral has already taken place, and his brother James, who had left the phone message notifying Will of their mother’s death, has skipped the reservation to satisfy his wanderlust. Will, by now a famous photographer based in Toronto, is left to engage with a community of people with whom he is no longer intimately linked. Watching Will’s awkward return leaves me feeling worried about the film’s narrative on two levels. Already averse to Indians on the big screen, I instinctively think, “Oh, no. This one’s gonna be bad.” Will is a long-lost relative whose discomfort signals his broken ties with Medicine River. Greene’s performance is awkward and at times overacted. He lurches through his return to Medicine River and reconnection with some of the local Indians. Harlan, his Indian guide and distant relation, plays on Will’s unmistakable discomfort, overplayed by 112| Jacki Rand Greene, with just about everything: the modest reserve town, rapid-fire introductions to local Indian people, teasing and humor, and Will’s obvious memory loss of things familiar before he left for Toronto. ThesoundtrackplaystothestrainedcomicjourneyfromTorontotoMedicineRiver.Where had I heard that before? And why did it seem so out of place? The director of the film is Stuart Margolis,bestknownforhisroleas“Angel”inthe1980sseriesRockfordFilesstarringJamesGarner fromNorman,Oklahoma—where,coincidentally,IobtainedmyPhDinhistory.Rockfordplays a private detective on the coast of California. Angel and Rockford are former cellmates who, against Rockford’s private wishes, cannot get their lives disentangled. Angel turns up all too regularly at Rockford’s door to beg for money or for help to get out of a jam. Rockford Files was oneofmyfavoriteshowsinthe’80s,andJamesGarner(alsofromNorman,Oklahoma,and“part Cherokee”) has been a favorite actor of mine. I rarely missed an episode, and watched the show in syndicate throughout graduate school. All of this goes towards explaining the soundtrack of Medicine River. Check out the scene where Will wakes up in his mother’s house the morning after a bumpy ride into town. Derivative “Rockford Files” soundtrack plays to the first meeting between Will and Harlan and turns up throughout the rest of the film. Harlan must coax Will into taking photographs of the elders for a calendar. But nothing is ever that straightforward in Indian Country, where robbing Peter to pay Paul becomes an art form. Will learns that Harlan is not so subtly enlisting him in a ruse involving a grant application for a fictive project (wink, old Indian trick), “Photographic Study of Wildlife Migration Patterns in Southern Alberta.” “It was the only grant available.” Harlan and Big John Yellow Rabbit, director of the Friendship Center, want a van to take elders around to traditional social events like “hockey games and bingo.” But the grantors have given them cameras instead of money. Harlan and Big John get a loan on the cameras and buy the van. And that’s where the calendar comes in. They get the money for the calendar from the band council, “small business loan,” and buy basketball uniforms—“to give the boys pride so they’ll win the championship.” Will’s time away from the reserve leaves him lost to the logic of Indian projects. “So, there’s a loan on the cameras that you got from the government but you bought the van. And you got a loan from the band for calendars, but you bought basketball uniforms.” Harlan’s pride in Will erupts, “Bingo!” And I’m rolling on the bed laughing at the Indian shell game. There’s hope for the movie. Harlan is far from being done with Will. Harlan...

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