The Exiles

This is a film that certainly won't appeal to the average person. However, despite this, it is an interesting and important film. The movie began as a school project at USC and eventually resulted in this small-time picture. It's about a group of displaced American-Indians who are living in Los Angelese. Unfortunately, their sense of purpose and work ethic have become lost in the transition from the reservation. This film documents a 24-hour stretch in their rather purposeless lives. As a piece of history and commentary it's very important stuff, though it's also the type stuff that is dreadfully dry. Seeing people going about their lives as you hear voice-overs and see dialog crudely inserted (it almost never matched the lip movements of the characters and was sloppy) becomes a bit of a drag after a while. A noble fictionalized documentary but one for which you really have to have a lot of patience in order to enjoy.

"The Exiles" was made on a shoe-string budget by a number of idealistic young film-makers "led" by Kent Mackenzie as "writer/director/editor.

Mackenzie and his crew were dismayed (putting it lightly)by what they saw as a lack of use of film as an artistic medium. At the same time the standard "Hollywood" aesthetic sacrificed subject, in order to obtain perfect/yet unrealistic lighting schemes, camera movement, framing and pristine sound tracks.

Erik Daarstad, John Morrill and Bob Kaufman shot an incredibly striking 35mmm B&W film. It is truly stunning. And a testament to all involved.

"The Exiles" is phenomenal in that, Mackenzie agreed not to put anything in the film that "the actors" objected to in any way. Appropriately, but very unusual, the "voice" in the film is that of the subjects.

"The Exiles" is of a specific time: a Los Angeles that literally no longer exists. And it is timeless, in the questions it asks and in it's gut wrenching portrayal of a particular group of individual's lives. Lives that unfortunately could/and do exist as I write this almost 50 years later.

Mackenzie credits the viewer with the intelligence to relate to the human condition as seen on screen. And explore for one's self how we fit into a world in which these conditions exist. We aren't forced to listen to the traditional "voice of god" voice over that dehumanizes all involved in the experience.

Sadly, Kent Mackenzie died young in May of 1980. He made relatively few films. Yet, "The Exiles" and his USC student film: "Bunker Hill" (made with Robert Kaufman) spoke to a bright young artist who worked with an integrity few possess.

If one has the opportunity to see this film as it should be, in a theater on a 35mm print. It is well worth the time. And an experience which will stay with you from that day forward.

A belated attempt at an American neorealism or rather peaceful protest against the chintz and artifice of Hollywood with a document of the down and out who the movies were never about, either way this film about a group of young indians eking out a living in downtown Los Angeles is a rare artifact and an amazing find.

The lives; equal parts mundane and exciting, wearily enthusiastic at the prospect of another night where nothing but time flies and the same people are bolted down in the same bar stools. Beer bottles change hands over cheap formica counters, people dance, look around bored, smile at looking and being looked, saunter and stroll around aimless. During most of this the woman is back in a movie theater catching a late-night show. At some point the lights come up and intermission music plays from the speakers as sleepy patrons stretch and look around with drowsy eyes; it's that kind of movie. The moments no self-respecting Hollywood movie would bore its audience with, here strung up to see what kind of life they make up.

But most importantly, what precious, valuable poem about a Los Angeles that is no more. Not the Los Angeles imagined by Hollywood, the movie version as a fantastical den of iniquity where sultry femme fatales seduced schmucks in Spanish-style mansions. The real deal, where people lived. Cinema verite as it were, purporting the revelation of some truth in turn.

What truth here is all in the image. We can cobble together a view of the historic past but never before the invention of the camera lens did we have the actual thing rich with so much texture and detail, the magical contradiction of living ghosts (people or places).

Come to this not to be a told a story about these people. Ordinary anxieties of the displaced the same as everywhere else, the young and restless with too much time. Come to this to inhabit for a while, to sit around and listen. Compare with what LA we are thrown into 30 years later in Falling Down.

In the extras of the pristine restoration conducted by the UCLA, we find a 1956 student short about Bunker Hill, the neighborhood depicted. It's perhaps even better than the actual film. Interviewed are actual residents as we see footage of day-to-day lives, old men all about to be swept aside with their old world. They like to watch the public works constructed in the area, the ones will eventually push them out.

The premise is simple-we follow a group of young, modern day Native American men and women in Los Angeles over 24 hours. We experience their daily rituals, conflicts, and pleasures, and, for the most part, I found this rather simple film to be highly interesting. Although it remains virtually plot less throughout, there are some moments of conflict and surprising intensity that save it from being "boring" or overly mundane. The tragedies as well as the comedies of life are explored, as personalities, feelings, and opinions are revealed and studied.

The highlights of the film are the dazzlingly beautiful voice over sequences, in which a random character will voice their perspective on their way of life or their friends or their hopes and aspirations, and so on. They transform the every man into a wise and lovable poet. We understand and learn about our characters more and more not only through their subtle actions, but also their words and ways of communicating.

However, there are moments of boredom here. I think this movie would have worked better as a lengthy short film that would be, say, 35-40 minutes long. That would be perfect. Either that or a little bit more conflict or humor or just flat out interesting events.

The Exiles by Kent Mackenzie, USA (Documentary). A 1961 documentary chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in LA.

A unique and powerful film, blending storytelling with documentation. Mackenzie constructed a narrative about one day in the life of three main characters - a pregnant young woman (Yvonne), the father (Homer), and a man about town (Tommy). Both men are profound alcoholics, and the woman seems stunned by the circumstances of her life though hopeful for the future of her child.

The film opens with portraits from Edward Sheriff Curtis's monumental North American Indian, which I recommend as a starting place. Mackenzie has a sharp eye for cultural details - check out the Grand Hotel mattress in Yvonne and Homer's apartment, as well as the magazines, comics, advertisements, toys, and street scenes.

The story develops via voiceovers by Yvonne, Homer, and Tommy - and an amazing middle sequence from the rez, with generous doses of native language and music.

This is a must-see movie for anyone interested in social work, indigenous peoples, or the dark side of American culture. Never boring for any viewer.