Wild Indian
A history of violence is unveiled in a fascinating but sometimes puzzling tale by a promising new talent.
Michael Greyeyes
On the strength of this first feature film, Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr has been hailed as a director to watch. That is understandable because Wild Indian is both ambitious and intriguing. But, at the same time, despite being heartfelt, this is a work that fails to cohere fully. It seems likely that Corbine wanted to avoid being too didactic about the issues inherent in his story (he is writer as well as director here) but he has ended up leaving the viewer uncertain as to where the main emphasis of his tale lies.
Corbine is a native American and he has made his central characters two members of the Ojibwe people growing up in Wisconsin in the 1980s. Makwa (Phoenix Wilson) and Teddo (Julian Gopal) are cousins and close companions, a bond all the stronger because Makwa has an abusive father (Elisha Pratt) and is also failed by a mother who drinks too much and fails to protect him. We first see the boys in their early teens when a crucial event in their lives occurs. Makwa shoots dead a youth of whom he is jealous and, when Teddo then arrives on the scene, Makwa leans on him to help cover up the crime.
After that the narrative jumps forward to 2019 to introduce us to the cousins as adults. Makwa (Michael Greyeyes) has now taken the name of Michael Peterson and is living in California where with a corporate job and a white wife (Kate Bosworth) he is aspiring to the life-style of up-market Americans. In contrast to that, Teddo (Chaske Spencer) is unmarried and has spent time in jail on drugs charges and the like. But he is proud of his native roots and, when released from prison, he visits his sister (Lisa Cromarty). His rapport with her 5-year-old son, Daniel (Tres Garcia), illustrates very clearly the fact that Teddo is at heart a good man and sensitive too. Indeed, it is the weight of the guilt that he feels for having become complicit in Makwa’s crime that now leads him to travel to California to find and confront his cousin.
Corbine’s style of story-telling is very pared down and, at least in the film’s first third, the narrative moves swiftly. It does so by concentrating not on incidentals or on atmosphere but by showing only what is essential to building the plot. Nevertheless, in contrast to that succinct start, the story that develops is full of diverse elements, rather too many indeed.
A brief prologue referenced again in the film’s concluding moments refers back to the 18th century and puts one in mind of the terrible legacy of diseases bestowed by colonialists on native peoples. That emphasis suggests that this kind of impact will be a major theme of the film and, indeed, in its own way Makwa’s change of name encourages us to consider assimilation and the loss of native culture. Yet, while these elements can seem relevant to this story, it is also the case that the crime committed in childhood already hints at ruthlessness and envy thus making Wild Indian a portrait of a man whose adult character is shaped by psychopathic tendencies. This aspect appears even more central than the racial issues especially when, late on, Michael violently threatens a woman who might otherwise be ready to accuse him of the murder. At other times one feels that Corbine’s prime concern is to bring out the complexity of individuals: society might look at Teddo’s history and see him simply as a criminal type, but he emerges here as essentially sympathetic while it is Michael, outwardly respectable and a success, who is the damaged and dangerous man.
The later stages of Wild Indian concentrate on Michael and are not without a touch of melodrama and we do come to miss the warmer scenes that feature Teddo and his sister (Lisa Cromarty in that role is one of the few supporting players to make a mark). By the close it is very much Michael who is the central character and it is, of course, to Corbine’s credit that he does not soften the film’s portrait of him despite the shared ethnicity of Michael and his creator. Yet, given the ambiguity over the significance to be given to the various factors both internal and external that contribute to making Makwa the man he becomes, one is left uncertain just what Corbine wanted the viewer to take away as key to the story that he has chosen to tell.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Michael Greyeyes, Chaske Spencer, Phoenix Wilson, Julian Gopal, Lisa Cromarty, Sheri Foster, Jesse Eisenberg, Kate Bosworth, Tres Garcia, Scott Haze, Joel Michaely, Elisha Pratt, Jenna Leigh Green.
Dir Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr, Pro Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr, Thomas Mahoney and Eric Tavitian, Screenplay Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr, Ph Eli Born, Pro Des Jonathan Guggenheim, Ed Ed Yonaitis and Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr, Music Gavin Brivik, Costumes Matthew Hixenbaugh and Nikki Pelley.
Logical Pictures/Pureplay Entertainment/30 West/Boulderlight Pictures-Vertigo Releasing.
87 mins. USA. 2021. Rel: 29 October 2021. No Cert.