Indian Horse (2018)

How sad is this?

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I knew alot about the residential schools before watching this movie. I really like how this movie was directed. It showed the true horrors of the residential system maybe not in full detail, but close enough. I like how the only seemly good person turned out to be the worst person in Sauls life. Showing this clip at the end of the movie was perfect. It really makes it stick into the audiences head what these poor unfortunate souls went through/ still go through. I'm glad this movie was made.

It was a heart-wrenching well acted movie. It showed briefly how disgusting the residential school life/death would have been for these youth. How self-righteous the priests & nuns really were despite the sexual abuse, cruelty & inhumanity they displayed towards children in their "care"...all the while insisting it was in the name of their GOD!

The systemic racism and government-sanctioned damage done by the residential school system in Canada has been much in the news in recent years and deservedly so. This film -- which was just put out in general release in our area a week or two ago, though it made the rounds of film festivals last years and has multiple awards from those -- is a searing look at what was done to native children in one such school, but it's more than just that. From beginning to end it amounts to a pretty comprehensive biography of one man, Saul Indian Horse, from age 6 to middle age, and covering the 1950's through the '80's.One thing that runs through the whole film that really just draws you in unspoken is the ambience of quiet and often stillness -- it's more of an attitude exuding from the First Nations characters in the story than anything to do with the action, but it's something that became evident once we had left the theater.Young Sladen Peltier plays Saul as a boy and he's excellent. The opening scenes show him with his parents, brother, and grandmother living in the wilderness and more or less on the run from the white authorities who are bent on taking the boys away. We see them in stunningly beautiful landscapes and doing just fine. Anyway -- thanks to a series of family tragedies Saul is taken away and the main story starts. It's a chain of deep lows and transcendent highs from there, as Saul survives the brutalities of the school system but finds daily escape in hockey, which he turns out to excel at: on the ice, he's fast, elusive, and a genius around the net. This is his ticket out of the school and on to a series of bigger and better league play. He's strangely standoffish from the teacher who seems to be the most supportive, Father Gaston (Michael Huisman), for a reason that's revealed only at the end (and you can probably guess what I mean). Saul is played at successively older ages by Forrest Goodluck and Ajuawak Kapashesit, who are also right on the mark.But at the level of the Toronto Monarchs (a feeder teem for the genuine big leagues) the relentless abuse from the (then) all-white opponents proves too much -- and although this remains unsaid, his own teammates don't 'protect' him as they would another star player. The inevitable meltdown occurs, he disappears from sight, and falls into the familiar cycle of alcoholism and low level jobs. Finally, meetings with a recovery group bring him back to some level of equilibrium and peace.This story doesn't end like the Jackie Robinson saga. Saul doesn't reach the glory and fame in the major sporting world that he had the talent to gain. The highs and low finally settle somewhere in the middle -- he returns to the only place that he was comfortable, happy, and welcome as a teenager and young man.Clint Eastwood was a co-executive producer for Indian Horse. Apparently he was surprised and shocked that this kind of systemic abuse happened in Canada, which he thought was so civilized and 'polite'. It was everywhere. For one of the Australian takes on the same issue, go back and see Rabbit Proof Fence, which also deeply affected me two decades ago when I saw it. The First Nations are finally more able to tell their own stories.

Dolby Sound is a vital force in this film. The narrative is framed - beginning and end - by unseen people around the theatre speaking as if before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That was established to explore Canada's historic abuse of its indigenous citizens - from the notorious Catholic schools to the current injustice in the treatment of natives, especially the women. When the film narrative unfurls it's the hero's own long and cripplingly suppressed story of his suffering. The surround sound voices put us in the committee, make us a witness and potentially a sharer of the speaker's horrid experience. That stereo adds to the immediacy of Richard Wagamese's source novel. The story is so riveting and the social predicament it exposes so compelling that one can suspend ordinary judgments upon such things as the acting, the narrative rhythm, the emotional manipulation. The cause justifies the means. All three actors who play Saul at various ages hold us, from the child's innocence through the adolescent's promising success to the adult's defeat. The climactic revelation of the six-year-old's exploitation provides an unexpected and summary shock. Wagamese celebrates Canada's indigenous culture and spirituality in the face of its national oppression. The film does both his fine work and Canada's shame justice.