FLICKS: Exiles If you’ve ever spent an all-nighter aimlessly looking for some kind of fun, Exiles captures that sense of emptiness.
by Chris Dashiell- The Film Snob
In 1959, a young English film student at USC named Kent MacKenzie became interested in the lives of the American Indians he met living in the Bunker Hill neighborhood of L.A. He thought he was going to make a documentary about Native Americans in the city. But as he got into the project, it developed into something else—a fiction film closely reflecting the experiences of the nonprofessional actors MacKenzie had recruited. It's called The Exiles, a story taking place within one night in L.A. that tells both of Native American alienation and a divide between women and men in the urban world.
First we meet Yvonne, an Indian woman expecting her first child. As she looks in shop windows at consumer goods that she wishes she could afford, we hear her say her secret thoughts in voice-over. She left the reservation to find something better, and she wants to raise her child to go to school and have more opportunities than she did. When she arrives home after work, we hear her sorrow and dissatisfaction with her husband Homer, who already has some of his drinking buddies over. Maybe he'll change when the baby comes.
That night, Homer drops her off at a movie and goes to a bar with his friends. For the rest of the night we follow him and the others as they break into two groups—Homer and a Latino friend going to a poker game and then another bar, while two other friends drive around with some Indian girls they pick up, drinking all the while. We also hear Homer's thoughts about his life in voice-over, and those of Tommy, a brash, unemployed womanizer who lives from day-to-day. The words are very realistic because they draw on the actors' own lives. From time to time we cut back to lonely Yvonne at her movie, and then as she walks back to stay at a friend's for the night. When the bars close the guys all go to a hill overlooking the city where they pound drums and do Indian chants, a gathering which dissolves eventually into drunken fighting.
The picture is remarkable for its extremely patient focus on the details of night life. A studio film would probably telescope all the action for the sake of drama, but MacKenzie creates an astonishing slice-of-life effect. As the movie goes on, you really feel the atmosphere of these late-night bars and dives, the cramped quarters and the poverty-stricken characters on the streets. By letting the scene dictate the film's texture rather than imposing his own ideas on it, the director made space for a vision of 1950s Los Angeles that is almost palpable. And if you've ever spent an all-nighter aimlessly looking for some kind of fun, this film captures that sense of emptiness. We are left with Yvonne's hopes for a better future contrasting with Homer's surrender to the drowning of suffering in the moment. The power of this theme creeps up on you gradually until the revelatory final scene.
The picture took three years to make, and was finished in 1961. Then it fell into obscurity, only recently to be resurrected and released to theaters. The Exiles is an object lesson in the value of honesty and realism in film.
Chris (the Film Snob) produces the weekly mini-program "Flicks" exclusively for 91.3FM KXCI. Tune in Mondays at 8:00PM and Fridays at 10:00AM and 3:00PM. For more writings from the Film Snob visit www.cinecene.com
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