Search - The Business of Fancydancing on DVD

One of the best films I've ever had the pleasure of viewing

Phil Rogers | Ann Arbor, Michigan | 11/28/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It will probably be little known to many white folks who haven't spent a fair amount of time amongst the Native population or else on its fringes, but these depictions are pretty much mainstream. The way imagination, dream, and thoughts blend seamlessly with the "real-word" of flesh and stone, is telling, but closer to the intense world view that is here for the waking and dreaming.The musical creativity was perfectly astounding, both the writing and performances/improvisations, ditto the sound editing, photography, and film editing. And the director used real people rather than trained actors - their stories thus meshed in a genuine way, exposing real native issues without even a hint of sugar-coating.Some reviewers felt it was choppy - I experienced it as smooth. Sometimes the poetry was a bit unappealing, but that was, after all, part of what gave teeth to the story. The [perceived choppiness] might have been a response as part of the actuality of the rez experience and the "Indian' world view, along with the social interactivity of the personalities of Aristotle, Seymour, Mouse, and the rest. It's clearly not a defect of the screenwriting or the direction of the film. The film has a wonderful pace and rhythm throughout. Yes, the content is intentionally disturbing - then again maybe not intentionally - in the sense that it's not a contrivance, it doesn't come off that way. It's more the way things could/would naturally move and develop given the circumstances - there's nothing even remotely implausible here. An unstated theme is the way the scenes seem to reel around - so much like the experience of fancy dancing. This style of powwow dancing/costuming that was at its height around the time the principals in this story would have been coming of age. (Currently - grass dancing for boys and young men, and jingle dancing for girls and young women - are the newer, more prevalent styles). And we can't forget one of the fiddle pieces Mouse intermittently plays (along with the classical and emotionally wrenching distillations of powwow or medicine songs) - it sounds like a reel to me, maybe even the famous Virginia Reel. In a most essential way, the collection of intermittent fancy dance sequences and related songs and recitations - always filmed in darkness, as if in an imaginative sphere/space - this is an underlying modus operandi of the story and of its depiction.Mouse's violin improvisations are a wonder to behold. Some of the imaginative sequences with him and Seymour or Aristotle were brilliant cross-cultural and/or intensely revealing re-inventions of the traditional native performance practices. And there is some of the best improvisational-style singing I have heard in any genre - even to the point of surpassing many of the better flamenco singers.Aristotle [in both his singing and his acting] was particularly skillful at portraying every emotional nuance, from searing intensity to the subtle, profoundly spiritual - such that the experiences depicted may be felt to jump right out from the screen and to swirl around the viewer. And it's part of who the actor is depicting that he is totally fluid - uncanny, almost unpredictable in the way he moves from one state to the next - a thorough master like Coyote [the trickster god/goddess], and never ever unconvincing.And finally - to the credit of the project as a whole, special effects are never overly blatant, which is the way one should proceed when glimpsing this culture where everything is as it seems. (Yeah right, there's always something seething just beneath the surface, just before the next event is to occur.) This is not one person's story, but is rather a collection of anecdotal knowledge, visionary gleanings, where oftentimes one person's dream fades into another's reality, and wondering are they the same?There are some astounding depictions of shared experiences of two or more people, more candid and potent than the average well-scrubbed Hollywood actors ever come close to reaching into. Witness the brief love scenes; and one of the deleted scenes, where Aristotle and Mouse's blonde ex-girlfriend are having a long conversation - call it a confrontation.And when the women sing, solo or in pairs/ensembles!!!!!!"