Smoke Singnals

            After reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and then watching the movie Smoke Signals I saw some similarities connecting the two.  One of the most apparent ones was the two main characters being a “big” tough guy, and the other a weaker guy (in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian it was the friendship of Junior, the weaker one, and his tough friend Rowdy, and in Smoke Signals it was the not as close friendship between the weaker Thomas, and the stronger Victor).  This was the first thing that jumped out as a similarity to me.  Then after watching the whole movie I saw the similarity of one of the two boys from each found themselves, and realized something they didn’t exactly know.  In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Junior realized that he can leave the reservation to go to school, and make something of himself even though he is a poor Indian.  But, in Smoke Signals it wasn’t the weaker of the two realizing something, but the stronger one.  After going to Arizona when Victor’s dad passed away, he realized even though his dad left him Victor was always foremost in this life.  Even though Victor would not believe this in the beginning, it was as if he shed the tough guy persona and let some emotion in.

                In Smoke Signals there were many scenes that involved music, or singing by the characters.  When watching a movie about Indians one would think that the music would be the typical drums playing or chatting, but this was not so in this movie.  Although some of the selection still had that Indian feel to them, they were not the stereotypical ones but ones that any culture could listen to.  It was also apparent that the music that was playing went seamlessly with the scene it was in.  There was one particular scene when Victor and Thomas were on the bus to Arizona and they began to sing while sitting on the bus, while they were singing it slowly faded into the same song that would continue to play while the camera pulled away from the driving bus.  I think that all of the song selections that were selected for this movie were done very well.  Every song had a connection to what was going on in the scene, making the music very enjoyable.