The story of American Indian boarding schools needs to be told. In the past Indian children were taken from their parents, often forcibly, and put into highly-regimented schools designed to eradicate all signs of their "savagery." Use of Indian languages in these schools was forbidden and harshly punished.
This movie probably should have been a "period place" showing the experiences of an Indian child thrust into the soul-killing world of the boarding school. Perhaps it was feared this approach would limit the size of the audience. In any case we get a modern-day story, set in northern Minnesota, in which a boarding school is glimpsed only occasionally in brief flashbacks. Surrounding these flashbacks lies a plot cluttered with a bewildering number of elements: the arrogance of the Catholic Church, shock treatments, commercial development of sacred Indian lands, an election for mayor pitting a white man against a red man, gambling casinos, a love story, hallucinations and visions, family secrets leading to tensions, a bizarre crucifixion-style murder, etc. There's even a subplot involving a geologist investigating earthquakes! All this clutter is unnecessary and self-defeating because the story which the movie wants to tell is strong enough as it is. It doesn't need to be "packaged" with elements which tend to detract from it rather than enhance it.
This movie probably should have been a "period place" showing the experiences of an Indian child thrust into the soul-killing world of the boarding school. Perhaps it was feared this approach would limit the size of the audience. In any case we get a modern-day story, set in northern Minnesota, in which a boarding school is glimpsed only occasionally in brief flashbacks. Surrounding these flashbacks lies a plot cluttered with a bewildering number of elements: the arrogance of the Catholic Church, shock treatments, commercial development of sacred Indian lands, an election for mayor pitting a white man against a red man, gambling casinos, a love story, hallucinations and visions, family secrets leading to tensions, a bizarre crucifixion-style murder, etc. There's even a subplot involving a geologist investigating earthquakes! All this clutter is unnecessary and self-defeating because the story which the movie wants to tell is strong enough as it is. It doesn't need to be "packaged" with elements which tend to detract from it rather than enhance it.