FILM REVIEW: WIND RIVER

WIND RIVER FILM REVIEW

Wind River is a film I rate as a 10/10, as an A. This film comes from the director of Hell or High Water, another great movie. Since this is a personal blog and not a review for a magazine or outside venue, I shall not list the running time, the producer and Production Company, or even the actor’s names. What I am trying to do here is actually something more than that, and it is to relay the major themes of this movie, a film that does what the best of art should aim to do, which is to address universal issues, and successfully, but without using metaphysics, gaudy and trite special effects, or the thousand and one cheap clichés Hollywood is so fond of feeding the masses.

So, what is Wind River about? Wind River is the story of a murder that takes place on an isolated American Indian Reservation in Wyoming. A young lady is seen running from something, and it is night, and she is in the snow. She is later discovered, deceased, by a local tracker. This local tracker, a male, plus the FBI agent assigned to do the initial investigation, are the main characters in the film. Yet, the supporting cast is very important, as are the sub-texts, and another character is the land itself. The movie is tightly edited, which means that there are no superfluous moments or words or scenes. Everything means something. The wide angel or wide screen shots of the rugged mountains and lands are no accident, and they are neutral, meaning the movie is showing what is there, and it is up to the viewer to feel either overwhelmed with beauty at the snow and vast spaces, or else desolation and emptiness. And this is a theme in the movie also, meaning how a people as a collective and persons individually respond to extreme weather and isolation, plus living conditions social and economic and spiritual that is different than in cities.

Two men in the movie have lost daughters, and they are friends already and this friendship is strengthened through the film due to events and also the suffering the men go through. There are other familial problems such as separation, self harm, drug addiction, and the movie seems to address these seamlessly and seriously. This is film for adults, and I don’t mean, oddly enough, just people over eighteen. By adult, I mean ‘cultural adult’ to coin a phrase. This means someone who is willing to look at a book, film, painting or other and be willing to have it on one hand address difficult and important themes, and secondly, as a viewer, be willing to think and consider seriously how these themes relate to one another and what the mean in, nothing less than life and death scopes and perimeters. Here we have a thriller, a detective, and an action story all rolled into one, with gunfights, zooming snow mobiles, a leading man and a leading lady, but at the same time a movie about good and evil, about the plight and oppression of indigenous people, about racism, misogyny, murder, animals, hunting, friendship, trust, deceit, desperation, and hope.

I wouldn’t call the movie overtly dark, though terrible events do take place. I would call the movie gritty and a fine balance has been struck between a modern thriller and an artistic narrative and film. It feels independent (read most all things good about film), and literary, but without being inaccessible or high falutin’(read snobbish or self-indulgent).

Is this a man’s movie or a macho film? I don’t think so. It might seem a bit like it at quick glance but this movie is about both sexes. In fact, there are moments in the film where, not for a woman’s calm head and bravery, things would have gone south faster. And speaking about men and women, the two main characters are so mature, well intended, and brave, that they go beyond this paradigm of man/woman, and seem to be above all just people. There is a moment that might get overlooked that explains this marvelously. The two characters are in the same room, and have gone through much to say the least. Their lips seem to quiver, or actually quiver, with the intensity and sadness, with the danger psychologically and physically of what they have seen, and the man picks up a magazine and flips it open and reads something from the world of people that have not been through what they have. He says calls out the title of the article as, Ten Signs he is into You. This moment portrays two different worlds intentionally. The world of the magazine that is flippant, shallow, self-involved, glossy, dumb, materialistic, and the world he lives in, and that the female character has, through the movie, entered. He explains that luck and other things are for the city, for other people, - that they are, (I paraphrase here, a type of luxury,’ and that out there, it is survival and self-reliance that are key.

I think the movie is about being scarred and even scared, being wounded, being in strange environments, yet carrying on in spite of this. So, the movie is about the enduring human spirit. The director chose to have the near end of Hell or High Water take place on a mountain. He did the same thing here. It works. I think the mountain consciously and sub-consciously represents a place of higher truth, - and truths and justices and more than both, - destinies, ultimately work themselves out high on these mountains. And the movie itself is higher than most of what we see these days, so deserves a higher place. It is gritty and bold and well written, it is examining things people usually go to the movies to forget about or avoid, and it examines them with a well held camera, a finely written script, acting full of power and prowess, and an eye towards addressing universal themes through its local, but by no means small, story.

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