-
Monday, Apr 14, 1997
Powwow Highway
This is a road movie shot through the cracked lens of a destroyed culture. The plot concerns two unlikely childhood pals from the Lame Deer Cheyenne reservation in Montana: Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez), a cynical veteran of wars foreign (Vietnam) and domestic (Wounded Knee); and Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer), a 300-pound gentle giant who travels in the ether of an ancient culture. Of the two, wiry Buddy is the "heavy"; Philbert's affect is a strange (and lovely) weightlessness. But it is Philbert who is most adaptable to modern times, making religious contacts over CB radio and Hershey Bar offerings to the gods. Heading for Santa Fe in a four-wheeled pony, they leave the poverty of the reservation for a less tangible kind of poverty as they crisscross an alien nation. This independent feature may have a goofball buddy-film coating, but its eerie lyricism comes through, like the Cheyenne ruins whose spirits strain to rise through the asphalt.
This page may by only partially complete.