journal features

movie review - Wind River

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2018.03.19

This is a surprisingly excellent story of a wildlife officer who becomes involved in the investigation into the murder of a friend's daughter. The two friends share the loss of children and they share being on the wrong end of the economic spectrum but they are divided by the cultural/racial lines of one being white and the other first nations. The callous disregard for murders in the indigenous population compounds other serious problems such as the hurricane-proportion disaster that is the US narcotics crisis. Even the oil industry surfaces in this thing.

One thing that this movie manages is to show and not tell. I don't know when this became a special thing in movie-making, but it's definitely becoming more rare. Impactful storytelling has to happen in the setting, the people, the cinematography, the dialog. And this does all of that. This is not easy watching, but it is delivered perfectly.

Strongly recommended. A favorite.

rand()m quote

One day you will take a fork in the road, and you're going to have to make a decision about which direction you want to go. If you go one way, you can be somebody. You will have to make compromises and you will have to turn your back on your friends. But you will be a member of the club and you will get promoted and get good assignments. Or you can go the other way and you can do something [...] for yourself. If you decide to do something, you may not get promoted and get good assignments and you certainly will not be a favorite of your superiors. But you won't have to compromise yourself. To be somebody or to do something. In life there is often a roll call. That's when you have to make a decision. To be or to do.

—John Boyd, US Air Force