Smoke Signals

Smoke Signals, American coming-of-age comedy-drama film, released in 1998, that was directed by Chris Eyre and was the first feature film written, directed, and coproduced by Native Americans. Its screenplay was adapted by author Sherman Alexie from his short story “This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona” (1993). Encompassing themes of identity, friendship, forgiveness, and reconciliation, Smoke Signals was commended by the American Film Institute “for its Indigenous cast and crew who tell an authentic story from their perspective.”

Plot summary and characters

Victor Joseph (played by Adam Beach) and Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) are teenagers living on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation in northwestern Idaho. The film begins with Thomas recounting a tragic event that occurred when he and Victor were babies. During a party one Fourth of July (described by Thomas as “white people’s independence”), Thomas’s parents died in a house fire. Victor’s parents, Arnold (Gary Farmer) and Arlene (Tantoo Cardinal), were also at the party, and it was an intoxicated Arnold who saved Thomas from the fire.

Because of this act, Thomas, who was subsequently raised by his grandmother (Monique Mojica), sees Arnold as a hero—albeit a flawed and complicated one with an addiction to alcohol. Victor, on the other hand, grows up alternately resenting and fiercely loving his father, even though he and his mother suffer from Arnold’s physical and emotional rages. As a young boy, he takes out his anger by throwing beer bottles at the family’s car. When Arlene comes to understand that she and her husband’s substance use is adversely affecting Victor, she fights with Arnold, telling him that they must stop drinking. Playing out a scene he has been hinting at for some time, Arnold leaves his family and moves to Phoenix. He and Victor never see each other again.

As children, Victor and Thomas have an on-again, off-again friendship, and they are very different people. The teenage Victor is a strong, hotheaded basketball player, whereas Thomas is quiet and thoughtful, with a cheerful, optimistic nature. Thomas is a born storyteller, but most people on the reservation are tired of listening to his stories, and Victor is no exception, especially when it comes to stories about Victor’s parents. However, when Victor gets word that his father has died, he needs money to travel to Phoenix to collect Arnold’s ashes. Thomas offers to give Victor the money if he can come along on the journey. Victor reluctantly agrees, and the two embark on a road trip by bus.

Much of the film’s humor comes from Victor and Thomas sparring over stereotypes of Native American people and culture and from the two friends’ matter-of-fact reactions to issues of reservation life and colonialism. During their bus journey Victor chides Thomas for “trying to sound like some damn medicine man” and asks him, “How many times have you seen Dances with Wolves? A hundred, two hundred?” He then lectures the naive, ever-smiling Thomas, “Don’t you even know how to be a real Indian?…You gotta look mean or people won’t respect you.…You gotta look like a warrior. You gotta look like you just came back from killing a buffalo.” When Thomas points out that their tribe were fishermen, not buffalo hunters, Victor shoots back, “This ain’t Dances with Salmon, you know.” At another point, their discussion of the “cowboys and Indians” trope in Hollywood westerns leads them to invent an irreverent song about quintessential western movie star John Wayne.

When Victor and Thomas reach Phoenix, they meet Suzy Song (Irene Bedard), who lived next door to Arnold. Suzy gives them Arnold’s ashes and tells them about the man she knew, who is very different from the angry father that Victor remembers. Arnold had stopped drinking alcohol, Suzy tells Victor, and he constantly told loving stories about his son and regretted leaving his family. Through Suzy’s stories, Victor comes to see his father in a different light. After an eventful trip back to the reservation, Thomas and Victor part on good terms, with an acknowledgment of the bond between them and a better understanding of Arnold and his role in both of their lives. The movie ends with a powerful scene in which Victor disperses his father’s ashes while Thomas recites a poem (inspired by a piece by Dick Lourie) that asks, “If we forgive our Fathers, what is left?”

Production and reception

The story by Alexie that was the basis for the film’s screenplay appeared in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), a collection of interwoven short stories about life on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, where Alexie was raised.

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Smoke Signals premiered in January 1998 at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Filmmakers Trophy and the Audience Award in the drama category. Shot on a budget of just $2 million, Smoke Signals had a limited theatrical release, opening nationally in June on only five screens. Nonetheless, it was critically acclaimed and popular on the independent film circuit and grossed $6.7 million in theaters in the United States and Canada. That same year it received a special recognition for excellence in filmmaking from the National Board of Review.

Legacy

One of the cultural legacies of Smoke Signals is the catchphrase “Hey, Victor,” which is uttered many times throughout the film, especially by Thomas. The phrase even inspired the title of the “mockumentary” film Hey, Viktor! (2023), which stars and was cowritten and directed by Cody Lightning, who played the younger-aged Victor in Smoke Signals.

In 2018 the U.S. Library of Congress inducted Smoke Signals into the National Film Registry, a film preservation program that recognizes movies that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to America’s film heritage. In its citation, the registry notes: “After the early silent film pioneers James Young Deer and Edwin Carewe, the portrayal of Native Americans in cinema turned dark and stereotypical. These social trends started changing with motion pictures like the groundbreaking ‘Smoke Signals’…Beneath the highly entertaining façade, the film acquainted non-Native American audiences with real insights into the indigenous Americans’ culture.”