The Exiles (1961) User Reviews

a nice film to watch deep into the night

[framptonhollis · 7/10 · 20 February 2017]

The premise is simple-we follow a group of young, modern day Native American men and women in Los Angeles over 24 hours. We experience their daily rituals, conflicts, and pleasures, and, for the most part, I found this rather simple film to be highly interesting. Although it remains virtually plot less throughout, there are some moments of conflict and surprising intensity that save it from being "boring" or overly mundane. The tragedies as well as the comedies of life are explored, as personalities, feelings, and opinions are revealed and studied.

The highlights of the film are the dazzlingly beautiful voice over sequences, in which a random character will voice their perspective on their way of life or their friends or their hopes and aspirations, and so on. They transform the every man into a wise and lovable poet. We understand and learn about our characters more and more not only through their subtle actions, but also their words and ways of communicating.

However, there are moments of boredom here. I think this movie would have worked better as a lengthy short film that would be, say, 35-40 minutes long. That would be perfect. Either that or a little bit more conflict or humor or just flat out interesting events.

Life without hope

[lastliberal · 8/10 · 30 December 2009]

There are some real classics out there but you have to search with information from those who are in the know concerning great films and great filmmakers.

Kent MacKenzie gives us a 24-hour slice of the life of a young couple who moved from the reservation to Los Angeles in the 50s. I can go back and appreciate this now that I am older; much more than I would have at 11.

It is not a pretty picture. The men didn't work and spent their time drinking and gambling and hanging out. The wives were expected to feed them, clean their clothing, and give them what money they had.

There was a real fatalism in their voices and attitudes. Life was a party, and if things didn't work out, you could always go back to the reservation. Doing time? No problem, I do it outside, so I can do it inside.

Added to the National Film Registry this year, it is a slice of life that shows no promise.

A bit of history worth watching

[non_sportcardandy · 8/10 · 28 May 2010]

The main good points I'd like to pass on are for the benefit of those not having seen this movie.The older you are the more you may like seeing this on location film from 1961.Even for someone like me not familiar with the film location there will be things to remember,the cars,advertising,beer bottles,etc.Probably the most important point to the movie is that these Native Americans are in a new enviorment having come from the reservation,something different for that time period.The movie reflects their being between two different worlds. One of my favorite parts is when about three Indians enter a bar and greet many there warmly and one at a time. It's worth it to see the movie for the reasons previously mentioned.That being said I couldn't watch this movie without pondering questions..How much of the movie is reality? How much is drama? Is this a Friday night or every night/morning? Where does the money come from? Are they all from the same tribe? Not trying to pass off myself as a Native American expert/I speak the language but from the ones I've known it seems like at times different tribes don't get along.That's why I was wondering if the large groups in the movie were all from the same tribe.Despite the unanswered questions it's an interesting film.

A 1961 documentary chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in LA.

[hudsonwa · 28 February 2008]

The Exiles by Kent Mackenzie, USA (Documentary). A 1961 documentary chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in LA.

A unique and powerful film, blending storytelling with documentation. Mackenzie constructed a narrative about one day in the life of three main characters - a pregnant young woman (Yvonne), the father (Homer), and a man about town (Tommy). Both men are profound alcoholics, and the woman seems stunned by the circumstances of her life though hopeful for the future of her child.

The film opens with portraits from Edward Sheriff Curtis's monumental North American Indian, which I recommend as a starting place. Mackenzie has a sharp eye for cultural details - check out the Grand Hotel mattress in Yvonne and Homer's apartment, as well as the magazines, comics, advertisements, toys, and street scenes.

The story develops via voiceovers by Yvonne, Homer, and Tommy - and an amazing middle sequence from the rez, with generous doses of native language and music.

This is a must-see movie for anyone interested in social work, indigenous peoples, or the dark side of American culture. Never boring for any viewer.

Good but a bit tedious...

[planktonrules · 6/10 · 24 August 2010]

This is a film that certainly won't appeal to the average person. However, despite this, it is an interesting and important film. The movie began as a school project at USC and eventually resulted in this small-time picture. It's about a group of displaced American-Indians who are living in Los Angelese. Unfortunately, their sense of purpose and work ethic have become lost in the transition from the reservation. This film documents a 24-hour stretch in their rather purposeless lives. As a piece of history and commentary it's very important stuff, though it's also the type stuff that is dreadfully dry. Seeing people going about their lives as you hear voice-overs and see dialog crudely inserted (it almost never matched the lip movements of the characters and was sloppy) becomes a bit of a drag after a while. A noble fictionalized documentary but one for which you really have to have a lot of patience in order to enjoy.

Native Americans in LA think about their relations to each other

[treywillwest · 6/10 · 12 May 2015]

This was one of the first films to deal with the contemporary lives of Native Americans. It's still one of the very few pieces to deal with the Native urban diaspora, in this case in the no-longer existing LA neighborhood of Bunker Hill, in 1961.

More broadly, "Exiles" is a film about displacement, and finding oneself in a state of displacement, of having one's truest self be the displaced self. It focuses on a young, married couple who hardly see each other. The husband is out cavorting and fighting with other young quasi- hooligans. The wife is mostly alone, or abandoned at the cinema. The only scene where we sense that she is bonding with anybody is when she is in bed, in an officially asexual way, with a girlfriend.

As an empathetic depiction of the alienation that occurs when people are divorced from their (essentially extinct) culture, one cannot help but admire the film. Yet, I was left with the troubling sense that its depiction of characters driven to cling to each other based on the most basic similarities, such as tribe,race, and, perhaps most importantly in the eyes of the filmmakers, gender, was decidedly heteronormative. I wouldn't go so far as to call the film homophobic. The only brazenly gay characters, a couple of dudes dancing in a "straight" bar, are depicted in a neutral light. Yet, the isolation of man from woman, and "debauched" same-sex mingling are depicted as the prime symptoms of alienation under colonialism and capitalism. This attitude was all too common amid leftists in the era that the film was made.

For contemporary viewers, perhaps the most rewarding thing about The Exiles is its luscious black and white cinematography of the now destroyed Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. As a documentary extra on the DVD further attests, Bunker Hill was a dynamic, multinational district that was home to immigrant families and retired professionals. Soon after this movie was completed, the neighborhood was bulldozed in an attempt to "improve" LA. In this way, the film seems like a depiction of two fallen cultures: the exiles of crushed Native American culture inhabiting an urban landscape that is itself now only a celluloid ghost.

Stunned- I was transported into the world of displaced urban native americans.

[muputony · 10/10 · 27 October 2003]

Kent Mackenzie, USC Filmmaker, follows one 24 hr day of a native american couple and their friends in downtown Los Angeles, CA on & near Bunker Hill. With flashbacks to reservation life, the pathos of the "non-BIA approved" urban Indian life of poverty and utter hopelessness will move you beyond mere words. Homer & Yvonne are expecting a child - he is distant and lost, she abjectly passive and accepting of her fate. Absolutely real and so personal you may cry, knowing that nothing is going to get any better, and wishing that you could reach across time to make it different. Their child will be born in 1961-2 and is now age 40 if s/he survived.

Kent also made a film, "Bunker Hill" which followed an aged Doctor on his visits to patient's homes located on Bunker Hill area in Los Angeles where Homer & Yvonne lived. Scenes of Angel's Flight and old victorian buildings are in both films. Lost times and places now covered with corporate headquarters. Two American Tragedies.

An interesting watch

[Jeremy_Urquhart · 7/10 · 26 August 2022]

The Exiles feels like a simple movie by today's standards, but was probably a shock to the system back in 1961, for those who saw it. It really blurs the line between documentary and drama, and that's probably the thing I liked the most about it. There are interview snippets played throughout from genuine interviews, combined with a simple story that looks and is paced like a fictional movie.

I think the interviewees essentially play themselves, though, and the film is really just about the lives of a group of young Native Americans and their experience living in Los Angeles, outside of the reservations they grew up in. That part still feels quite unique, because you really don't get a lot of movies about Indigenous Americans specifically from their point of view. At worst, they're 2-dimensional enemies in westerns who are portrayed as nothing more than an obstacle, and unfortunately, that was most of their on-screen depictions for a while.

So I think that's where this film has the most value, especially when you consider how those far less sensitive westerns were still in fashion in the early 1960s. It's historically valuable, and I think the documentary + drama hybrid nature of it all makes it stand out, too. It's otherwise not a particularly exciting or gripping movie, but it's definitely solid, and certainly an interesting watch (enough so that it's included on the 1001 Movies You Must Watch Before You Die list).

"The Exiles" is an account of 24 hours in the life of a group of young Native Americans living in downtown L.A.

[Mackzee · 10/10 · 21 May 2008]

"The Exiles" was made on a shoe-string budget by a number of idealistic young film-makers "led" by Kent Mackenzie as "writer/director/editor.

Mackenzie and his crew were dismayed (putting it lightly)by what they saw as a lack of use of film as an artistic medium. At the same time the standard "Hollywood" aesthetic sacrificed subject, in order to obtain perfect/yet unrealistic lighting schemes, camera movement, framing and pristine sound tracks.

Erik Daarstad, John Morrill and Bob Kaufman shot an incredibly striking 35mmm B&W film. It is truly stunning. And a testament to all involved.

"The Exiles" is phenomenal in that, Mackenzie agreed not to put anything in the film that "the actors" objected to in any way. Appropriately, but very unusual, the "voice" in the film is that of the subjects.

"The Exiles" is of a specific time: a Los Angeles that literally no longer exists. And it is timeless, in the questions it asks and in it's gut wrenching portrayal of a particular group of individual's lives. Lives that unfortunately could/and do exist as I write this almost 50 years later.

Mackenzie credits the viewer with the intelligence to relate to the human condition as seen on screen. And explore for one's self how we fit into a world in which these conditions exist. We aren't forced to listen to the traditional "voice of god" voice over that dehumanizes all involved in the experience.

Sadly, Kent Mackenzie died young in May of 1980. He made relatively few films. Yet, "The Exiles" and his USC student film: "Bunker Hill" (made with Robert Kaufman) spoke to a bright young artist who worked with an integrity few possess.

If one has the opportunity to see this film as it should be, in a theater on a 35mm print. It is well worth the time. And an experience which will stay with you from that day forward.

Boring stills

[mrdonleone · 4/10 · 13 November 2019]

Talking about run boring movies and you look forward for it for many years because it's in these books of great movies and then you see it then there's some new refreshments about the movie industry inside this movie of course we can appreciate them to pull the rest the movies just to pure Barre and then of course the only thing that's going batteries of course the technical improvements on the movie and if we look at that your brother we cannot deny them but is it really worth it I don't think so

A rather Naive, but very effective film

[blackmamba99971 · 10/10 · 20 September 2010]

For the most part, I usually do not delve into the docudrama such as this one. But what intrigued me about this film, was its magnificent photographic and cinematic motions. The gist of the story is about some very reclusive urban Indian's in what looks like downtown Los Angeles. A woman named Mary who is pregnant and how she deals with herself in a very seedy part of town. Apart from her, is Homer, a guy who likes his friends, and loves his beer. A typical man who drinks all hours of the day and not have to deal with the consequences. I found it slightly tedious in this motion of a story, but I was amazed at the cinematography for which I cannot find another film like it. The scope of the streets with the lonely street lights, to police officers who do their daily routine of picking up the local drunks who make spectacle of themselves. The shadows, the gritty and dirty people out on a hot night, the headlights of a passing vehicle really makes you feel you are there participating in the nocturnal routines of each citizen. The blending of how each person goes about their nightly business, which includes a specific shot where a police man is looking at what looks like to be a pub or bar or other, his baton is being twirled in his right hand, not minding if there is a camera behind him at all. Brilliant film shots of the Los Angeles hills where the Indian's get together to create music of the old ancient world of their heritage. I have to say that Kent Macenzie was absolutely under rated as a movie director, his feel of a shot was breath taking, his ability to see the grime in the streets and present it with full blown nakedness, was sheer genius. I just wish that others who knew of him would have let him work on other larger projects, his keen eyes would have got them all Oscars. I cannot praise this film enough, an odd story, and a rather weak plot, but his work as a director and his scope of getting the right shot was nothing less than excellent. Just to add, I am not American born nor am I Native, I simply like films that have beautiful ingredients for which recognition is deserved. And this one really deserves it.

The Exiles

[jboothmillard · 4/10 · 29 December 2015]

I found this documentary film in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, I read more about it and it certainly sounded interesting enough, I was hoping the book placement would be deserved. Basically this film chronicles the lives of a group of twenty-something Native Americans, or "urban Indians" during a night out in Los Angeles. Yvonne Williams is pregnant and comments on her life and dreams, she does simple things such as shopping and cooking, while her husband Homer Nish goes out with friends to go drinking and gambling, during the night the men pick up women and have fights. Also starring Tom Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, Clifford Ray Sam, Clydean Parker and Mary Donahue. The cast playing themselves are alright, you can tell however that many of the scenes are staged and scripted a little, but I suppose it makes it more interesting, all in all it's not a film I'd see again, it is I suppose a reasonable documentary. Okay, worth seeing once at least!

Old worlds, captured forever

[chaos-rampant · 10 July 2011]

A belated attempt at an American neorealism or rather peaceful protest against the chintz and artifice of Hollywood with a document of the down and out who the movies were never about, either way this film about a group of young indians eking out a living in downtown Los Angeles is a rare artifact and an amazing find.

The lives; equal parts mundane and exciting, wearily enthusiastic at the prospect of another night where nothing but time flies and the same people are bolted down in the same bar stools. Beer bottles change hands over cheap formica counters, people dance, look around bored, smile at looking and being looked, saunter and stroll around aimless. During most of this the woman is back in a movie theater catching a late-night show. At some point the lights come up and intermission music plays from the speakers as sleepy patrons stretch and look around with drowsy eyes; it's that kind of movie. The moments no self-respecting Hollywood movie would bore its audience with, here strung up to see what kind of life they make up.

But most importantly, what precious, valuable poem about a Los Angeles that is no more. Not the Los Angeles imagined by Hollywood, the movie version as a fantastical den of iniquity where sultry femme fatales seduced schmucks in Spanish-style mansions. The real deal, where people lived. Cinema verite as it were, purporting the revelation of some truth in turn.

What truth here is all in the image. We can cobble together a view of the historic past but never before the invention of the camera lens did we have the actual thing rich with so much texture and detail, the magical contradiction of living ghosts (people or places).

Come to this not to be a told a story about these people. Ordinary anxieties of the displaced the same as everywhere else, the young and restless with too much time. Come to this to inhabit for a while, to sit around and listen. Compare with what LA we are thrown into 30 years later in Falling Down.

In the extras of the pristine restoration conducted by the UCLA, we find a 1956 student short about Bunker Hill, the neighborhood depicted. It's perhaps even better than the actual film. Interviewed are actual residents as we see footage of day-to-day lives, old men all about to be swept aside with their old world. They like to watch the public works constructed in the area, the ones will eventually push them out.

Cinema Verite at its Best

[dougdoepke · 29 June 2010]

Astonishing slice of cinema verite at a time when young filmmakers were trying to break the Hollywood habit in favor of the real world. The 70 minutes are not entertaining; however, they do fascinate. It's a nighttime of boozing carousal for several young Indian men amid the neon jungle of downtown LA. The camera tracks their aimless wanderings and endless drinking from one seedy venue to the next. It's LA like you've seldom seen it—a down-and-outers look at unvarnished urban decay. The faces too are fascinating, not like the usual Hollywood Indian or crowd scene extras.

It's a disturbing look, slow to accumulate until the poignant final shot. These are truly lost people, caught between two incomplete worlds-- the urban jungle of the white man and the captive reservation of the Indian. The men seem to treat most everything as a joke, perhaps a way of denying the dead-end reality of their lives. Ironically, they appear now to be strangers in their own land. It's the young Indian woman Yvonne, however, who's likely to evoke audience sympathy. It's she who dreams (her inner thoughts vocalized in voice-over) of a family and something like a normal life. But, the men in her life are truly lost, so her hopes appear doomed as well. Seeing this document may help viewers better understand the controversial American Indian Movement (AIM) of the 1970's.

Apparently, the project spanned several years of interrupted funding. Thus, the film has to be an artistic commitment of a high order on the part of filmmaker MacKenzie. Did he hope for a commercial release. A story and technique like this would seem to hold little promise of that. Did he hope for art house distribution and an appeal to the intelligentsia. Whatever the motivation, he's produced a document of lasting social value, and thanks be to TMC for bringing MacKenzie's achievement to today's audiences