FILM REVIEW: The Exiles
© A.J. Malouin 2008
(Rating: 4 by The Film Snob)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)
(1961/USA. Written and Directed by Ken MacKenzie. Cinematography by John Arthur Morrill, Robert Kaufman, and Erik Daarstad
We are told that this film’s original budget was US$539 and that it was never released in movie theatres. It’s easy to see why, as, incredibly beautiful though it is, “The Exiles” is also an incredibly uncommercial project.
This totally lovely lost little film has been found again, and it’s a sweet telling the of a time and place in America that we will never see again
Made by a director and three cinematographers who were all associated with the University of Southern California’s film school, “The Exiles” tells the story of 15 hours in the lives of a group of Native Americans living in L.A. during the 1950s.
Not content to stay on the reservations, this group has elected to live in and around L.A.’s Bunker Hill, in the neighborhoods of 1950 which no longer exist in this world.
Their days seem to be fueled by nothing more than alcohol, and riding around in automobiles, and hanging out with their friends.
The film is a quasi-documentary. It was made using input from the real-life people we see on-screen. It covers a Friday night and Saturday morning in their lives. The cameras follow them around as they drift through the late-afternoon that leads into a Friday night. We get the feeling, though, that this night could be *any* night in their lives, because all their days and nights are the time.
We hear poignant voice-over comments on how they feel about their lives.
One woman is expecting her first child and is looking forward to being a mom. Her husband, however, is ambivalent about the whole thing. He elects to drop her off at a movie theatre, and to drive off with his friends.
“The Exiles” starts slowly. It and the real-life actors in it seem to drift through the film. Gradually we are sucked into their existence, however.
During the highlight of the Friday evening and early Saturday morning, the Native Americans gather high on a hill-top overlooking the lights of L.A. They drive up the hill’s dirt road in twos and threes and gather to celebrate their Native American culture with music and song.
As they do, we become totally absorbed in the film. We come to realized that, as disjointed and rootless as they are down there inside the lights of L.A.’s neighborhoods, there is still a community that celebrates its Native American roots and culture up here on this night-time hill-top.
“The Exiles” is a beautiful portrait of alienation and the loneliness of groups which have been both swept up and ignored in America’s rush to what it calls “civilization.” The black-and-white photography is beautiful, and the film’s pacing is such that we are drawn into it without ever knowing what happened to us.
(1 hr 12. Not rated in the USA. In black and white, and English. With Mary Donahue as Mary, Homer Nish, Homer, Clydean Parker as Claudine, Tom Reynolds as Tommy, Rico Rodriguez as Rico, Clifford Ray Sam as Cliff, Eddie Sunrise as the singer on Hill X, Yvonne Williams as Yvonne.)