A few missed shots
Drama Indian Horse is a solid story, but gets a two-star penalty for execution
The saga of residential schools is a stain on Canada’s history, and one we are only beginning to come to grips with as a nation. Indian Horse, a novel by Ojibwa writer Richard Wagamese and now a movie from Stephen S. Campanelli, is an important part of that reconciliation. It’s a powerful story. I just wish it were a better movie.
A trio of First Nations actors portrays Saul, the central character in a tale that opens in 1959. Separated from his parents and grandmother, Saul is taken into a school system that was more concerned with religious and cultural inculcation than education. As he says in flashback, “the only test was our ability to endure.”
Saul witnesses all manner of atrocities, but finds a psychological balm in the form of hockey, which the kindly Father Gaston (Michiel Huisman) encourages the kids to play. “Hockey is God’s game,” the priest asserts. An odd credo, but love of the game will turn out to be Saul’s salvation, so maybe there’s something to it.
The film follows young Saul (Sladen Peltier) as he learns the game through the osmosis of Hockey Night in Canada. Teenage Saul (Forrest Goodluck) finds a new mentor and a new home, but also encounters racism from the all-white teams against which he competes.
Finally, there’s Ajuawak Kapashesit as grown-up Saul, which is where the film starts to lose its footing, piling on flashbacks, repressed memories and
a bout of alcoholism that seems to come out of nowhere. Indian Horse trusts its audience in the early going, but grabs our hands in the final act, lest we miss anything in its message.
I’m going to give the film a five-minute penalty (and two stars off ) for elbowing and offside clichés, with the reminder that it still has valuable things to say. Campanelli and screenwriter Dennis Foon, adapting Wagamese’s novel, take a great shot, even if they don’t quite score.