Americana
Ghost shirts, which are sacred to certain Indigenous communities, were believed to protect the owner from bullets by means of supernatural forces. It is this priceless artifact that plays a major role in Tony Tost’s debut film at the SXSW, Americana. This Western dramedy has some tricks up its sleeve as a result of a tight screenplay and a humorous script. The cast features a large number of actors such as Sydney Sweeney, Halsey, Paul Walter Hauser, Zahn McClarnon, Simon Rex, Eric Dane and Gavin Maddox Bergman.
Cal (Bergman) is the kind of guy that watches black and white Indiancture epics with cowboys on the sides. While he is kind of lost in the show on television, Mandy (Halsey) who looks exactly like Joan Jett and Dillian (Dane), a thug from the neighborhood are getting into an argument over what makes Cal her brother such a weirdo. Perhaps the fact that he is simply a white kid claiming to be the physical recast of Lakota’s Sitting Bull might be the answer. To see to it that Mandy is not oppressed by Dillian’s violent family, she punches him into oblivion and seizes the keys of his auto to get out, only for her brother to get cold feet stating that “his people are in need.” There are no options left to her except letting him go with a promise to come back once their financial status is improved. On regaining consciousness, Dillion grabs a firearm intending to follow up his ex girlfriend only to discover her absence alongside Cal who appears armed with a longbow. He to his disbelief assumes that this kid is messing with him when he foots arrows in his direction but this boy pretending to be an Indian was not joking.
Lefty Ledbetter (Hauser) is at the local café countermating the proposal that he had prepared to make to Penny Jo Poplin (Sweeney) a waitress. It had been his intention to ask his lady who had been with him for a period of two weeks to be his wife. The nominee volunteered to assist in the process but stammering held her back hesitantly.
From her position at the counter, Penny spies the figure of a young man on the telephone writing on a napkin, who happens to exit the restaurant. The elated girl hurries up to see what it said, which read ‘Friday diner 4pm’ and had four US dollars at the bottom. That same night after having come across a bar with Lefty, she persuades him to rush to her work place when the meeting is taking place with intentions of listening in to find out what the rush is about. What they learn about is the plan described as being a robbery among Dillion, Fun Dave (Joe Adler) and Roy Lee Dean (Rex) the theft of a ghost shirt and its illegal trade. With this knowledge, the two partner people in some plan to succeed in the robbery, the shirt and pocket the dollars. This though does not work out too well when Ghost Eye (McClarnon) and the Indigenous people show up. Believe me, all this, as one would say, is connected.
Americana is a non linear narrative, on this aspect I was clueless till I hit act two. Tost embeds this particularity into the narrative with enticing graphic elegance. There are a million players in this game. While Mandy does not want to see the plight of her family, Penny and Lefty hope to pocket the money for themselves, Roy is literally after the shirt as a piece of collection while Ghost Eye wants to return it to the people. Tost has created for us a complex and elaborate picture having many layers of action and comedy as well as story that are common to western culture, yet subverting them whole.
It is true however that it is the America which does not love its cowboys which talks about cowboys, to the dismay of the Americans, their society receives scorn from the Indigenous as well as the downtrodden in the world. Tost alms cultural correctiveness to which description is provided through dialogue by certain characters that Tost was careful where to stop in the amount of satire such that it becomes blasphemous. He did not want to let it go but still he was able to come up with a clever alternative.
However I shared the same concerns the film will commit the common mistake of most western films that run into the danger of ‘white saviourism’ but again the storyline retracts the characters such that they introspect and examine their actions. That is what doing good character building is all about.
Tost’s direction succeeds in evading what is typical of most debut directors that thing up things but the director manages to keep it simple and allows the characters to behave rather than interfere with their portrayals. There is a clarity of the language and the feelings because of the focus on the people. Halsey and McClarnon are the actors among the many who are amusing, determined, intelligent, enthusiastic and have unique concepts of how wealth should be acquired who make this motion picture what it is and without the rich, amusing cast that this film is. It is a little picture of American life.
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