Touches You

People are voting emotionally.

hyped garbage

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I really like Sherman Alexie. He is a great writer. That said, he is still a writer, and that does not mean he is a good director. The other successful film he was tied to was written by him, but directed by someone else. It shows in this film.The movie has a great idea behind it, but in the end it is just people talking. A lot of talking. Endless talking. Scenes go on and on and on and on... How people feel. Why they did this, why they did that. At times it is hard to watch, especially considering the low production value. It really does not look that great.Film is a visual medium, not a talking medium. People always try to counteract that by saying that films are full of dialogue, and they are. A good film, though. is still made up of actions and visuals, things that we can watch. This does not do that. It just shows people talking all the time. That's it.I really wish this one was handed off to another director who could have made the film into something more visual like "Smoke Signals." Instead we have this, and in the end it just does not hold up that well.

Those expecting another Smoke Signals should avoid this one. I was a big fan of Smoke Signals. Although the acting was fine, particularly from the star, Evan Adams and Michelle St. John, the film generally wanders around with a paper thin plot, leaving the actors without much to work with. While the movie has been heralded as innovative in allowing the actors to improvise, from my perspective it was disjointed and too heavily laden with flashbacks. The movie also ends abruptly, leaving the audience (here anyway) feeling cheated out of a story. It isn't bad enough to take anything away from Sherman Alexie's immense talent as a writer, but it shows that not all of his ideas translate well to film. Better luck next time.

At cost of risking the authorial fallacy, I'll say that I took this film to be autobiographical. One advantage of having a talented writer do a film about a talented writer is that, when the protagonist reads his writing, you don't cringe (we should also have first-rate musicians write the score in movies about fictional musicians). In "The Business of Fancydancing" the writing is gorgeous and is what gives the film substance and shining power. Seymour Polatkin/Sherman Alexie's poetry makes up the bulk of the screenplay, whether in the form of actual poems (read by the protagonist or other characters, printed on still frames, or rendered in song), or as part of the dialogue. The film is non-linear and non-realistic: people don't always speak like real people and events don't follow one another in chronological fashion. But Alexie is brutally honest in his portrayal of the truth of his characters, and the film finally feels much more authentic than most made-to-look-realistic, traditional movies. It is one of the paradoxes of fiction that realism is frequently better achieved through non-realistic means."Fancydancing" is a wrenching and angry movie about identity, belonging, and race. Leading one's life as a Native American is clearly no easy job, and Alexie takes a very unsentimental look at the ordeals and dilemmas that come with a Native heritage. His characters are not especially likeable, and all make questionable choices. As Alexie makes clear, however, there are no "right" choices. Whether you stay or go, conform or depart, life's going to getcha and people are going to be mad at you.The poetry beautifully depicts the pain of this dilemma while at the same time showing the redemption that comes with living the dilemma, sticking with it, not giving in. The images are occasionally hokey, and some sequences could have been cut without any loss to the overall effect of the film. But this is a brave film with a brave, unsparing vision, and it deserves a wide viewership.

This was my favorite of the 8 films I saw at the Florida Film Festival. It is a visually stunning film with strong emotional content. Poetic interludes punctuate the story and lend to the reality of the lead character (a poet). Behind it all, is an honesty and a truth that you do not find in the majority of films.