Songs My Brothers Taught Me (2015)

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The acting in this movie is really good.

It's easy to make a film like this go wrong, with all of the potential possibilities to be lazy and write these characters and stereotypes. Of course, the film doesn't do that and it's because Chloe Zhao has a real knack for creating profound humanity through the images that represent this type of life, humanity that she infuses her characters with. This is a very special film and this is a director to watch out for.

First time director Chloe Zhao takes her cues from Terrence Malick in this beautiful portrait of two siblings on the Pine Ridge Res. DeShaun is the youngest of two full biological siblings, taken care of by her older brother Johnny, who is about to graduate high school. A 3rd full sibling, Cody, is imprisoned, while the siblings' mother doesn't quite seem up to the task of taking care of any of her children. As graduation approaches Johnny faces a difficult decision; stay on the res where opportunity is limited but where he can take care of his sister and mother, or leave for L.A. where he knows no one and has nothing, in order to follow his girlfriend who has a full ride scholarship and who will be living in the dorms at school. There's not a huge amount of plot outside this main conflict and the characters mostly amble in and out of situations and conversations with very little narrative threads connecting them. But Zhao remains committed to capturing the joys and hardship of residential life where everyone has to hustle for money but beauty, friends and family are everywhere to be seen.

This is a stunningly true to life and tender movie. I had just watched Sky, in which Native Americans and their connections with a white woman were portrayed through the lens of a European romantic fantasy about NA life in America. Songs was the opposite - unsentimental, unsparing and filled with beautifully understated acting that let the story breathe. The photography was exquisite - I know that country and found myself longing to be there. The ragged weave of the story was precisely how life is lived by so many of us - no big epiphanies, no smarmed up resolutions, no miracles except for how people can hold fast to love. I thank the film-makers for their deep respect for the people and their recognition of the way the land is the base of hope for far too few of us.

I enjoyed the film, a contemporary portrait of growing up and coming of age in America in a very different setting and culture than most. Early on, the movie gave me the distinct feeling of watching a documentary rather than a fiction with rehearsed actors. Images tell the stories as much as the dialog, which is very spare. The characters seem very real, as real as their scruffy surroundings. A worthwhile portrait of a part of society most of us won't see, "really" see. The Badlands scenery is very stark and so are (most) of the lives depicted. It's interesting that I saw this film in a contemporary arts center, where it played for two nights. It seems films like this struggle to get on enough screens in enough places to get noticed much. Maybe some people will get to see in on video, I hope.