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Skins |
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By David N. Butterworth Some 60 miles southeast of Mount Rushmore’s looming monuments to Democracy stands Pine Ridge, a reservation of poverty-stricken Native Americans that is, according to Chris Eyre’s film Skins, one of the most depressed counties in the nation. With the mean annual income only $2,600 the inhabitants of Pine Ridge live way below the poverty line. Unemployment is at 75% here, crime is commonplace, alcoholism runs rampant. It’s this unusual setting that differentiates Skins from your typical domestic drama, yet it’s nevertheless an unremarkable one despite two strong lead performances by Eric Schweig as a rural South Dakota “rez” cop turned vigilante and his pathetic older brother, a Vietnam vet turned alcoholic played by the dependable Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves or almost any film requiring a strong Native American presence). Eyre’s film starts out briskly enough, almost like a documentary (perhaps it would have been better as one?), with soaring helicopter shots of the breathtaking South Dakota Badlands juxtaposed against the ramshackle shacks of Pine Ridge, a TV announcer’s voice effectively recounting the startling statistics–40% of the residents live in sub-standard conditions, death by alcohol is nine times the national average, life expectancy is 15 years less here than elsewhere. Like Michael Apted’s superior Incident at Oglala the film was actually shot in and around the Pine Ridge reservation itself, home of the Lakota Sioux and the famed massacre of Wounded Knee, where over 100 Lakota men, women, and children lost their lives. As a result Skins is part documentary by default and never less than interesting. But it loses momentum as soon as it settles into its traditional narrative of Rudy Yellow Lodge (Schweig) breaking up domestic brawls while keeping tabs on his drunk and disorderly brother Mogie who, since Pine Ridge is “dry,” chugs cans of Colt 45 two miles away in the border town of Whileclay, Nebraska (which, coincidentally, lays claim to one of the country’s largest beer distributors!). Minor characters are introduced–Mogie’s 17-year-old son Herbie (Noah Watts), Rudy’s sister-in-law Stella (Michelle Thrush), with whom the troubled cop is having an affair–but for the most part the film focuses on the relationship between the two brothers and what happens when one of Rudy’s renegade actions tragically backfires. Perhaps the plot, however hackneyed, should be viewed as an excuse for the
director (who made the engaging Smoke Signals in 1998) to conceal his
political rage. By simply sitting back and observing, much like the impassive
stone busts of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, Eyre judges not
but speaks volumes about the plight of his fellow Native Americans. And with a
White Mountain Apache currently in Federal prison charged with setting the
forest fire that destroyed hundreds of thousands of Arizona acres the film takes
on an even more ominous, controversial tone. As a spokesman for the Oglala Sioux
imparts towards the beginning of the film “I believe America is big enough, is
powerful enough, is rich enough to really deal with the American Indian in a way
it should be done.” |
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(out of four)