The Exiles

The main good points I'd like to pass on are for the benefit of those not having seen this movie.The older you are the more you may like seeing this on location film from 1961.Even for someone like me not familiar with the film location there will be things to remember,the cars,advertising,beer bottles,etc.Probably the most important point to the movie is that these Native Americans are in a new enviorment having come from the reservation,something different for that time period.The movie reflects their being between two different worlds. One of my favorite parts is when about three Indians enter a bar and greet many there warmly and one at a time. It's worth it to see the movie for the reasons previously mentioned.That being said I couldn't watch this movie without pondering questions..How much of the movie is reality? How much is drama? Is this a Friday night or every night/morning? Where does the money come from? Are they all from the same tribe? Not trying to pass off myself as a Native American expert/I speak the language but from the ones I've known it seems like at times different tribes don't get along.That's why I was wondering if the large groups in the movie were all from the same tribe.Despite the unanswered questions it's an interesting film.

"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.

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.

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.

There are some real classics out there but you have to search with information from those who are in the know concerning great films and great filmmakers.

Kent MacKenzie gives us a 24-hour slice of the life of a young couple who moved from the reservation to Los Angeles in the 50s. I can go back and appreciate this now that I am older; much more than I would have at 11.

It is not a pretty picture. The men didn't work and spent their time drinking and gambling and hanging out. The wives were expected to feed them, clean their clothing, and give them what money they had.

There was a real fatalism in their voices and attitudes. Life was a party, and if things didn't work out, you could always go back to the reservation. Doing time? No problem, I do it outside, so I can do it inside.

Added to the National Film Registry this year, it is a slice of life that shows no promise.