Welcome to The Weekend Watch, a weekly column focusing on a movie—new, old or somewhere in between, but out either in theaters or on a streaming service near you—worth catching on a cozy Friday night or a lazy Sunday morning. Comments welcome!
Back before Sterlin Harjo was creating hit TV shows like Reservation Dogs or co-writing big streaming films like this week’s Rez Ball, he was making movies for chump change in the heart of Oklahoma, movies that were subsequently shown to me, a guy taking film classes just a few miles off at the University of Oklahoma. The first film of his I saw was 2007’s Four Sheets to the Wind (perhaps because I was taking an acting class from one of its bit performers, Darryl Cox). A bittersweet drama with a painful sense of humor, it got me hooked on the filmmaker from the very start. Four Sheets to the Wind is streaming for free on many of the ad-supported streamers, like Tubi.
Starring Cody Lightning, who had broken out a decade earlier in 1998’s Smoke Signals, as Cufe Smallhill, the small-scale Four Sheet to the Wind takes on big topics (death, love, escape from life’s ruts) without falling into cliché. Smallhill runs into so many of the unassuming yet devastating incidents of Native life, on a reservation or not, that helped provide Reservation Dogs with its endless supply of pathos-inducing (and gut-busting) fodder.
His father’s death—and its deadpan aftermath—is the kick in the ass Smallhill needs to head to the big city of…Tulsa, Oklahoma. As someone who grew up in the Tulsa ‘burbs (Broken Arrow, to be exact), Tulsa isn’t exactly a mecca of culture. But it’s certainly less rural than most of the state, and offers just enough change for a young person to shake themselves out of what’s becoming a familiar cycle.
It’s in this city that Smallhill falls for his hard-partying sister Miri’s (Tamara Podemski) neighbor, played by Laura Bailey. Bailey is best known for her work on Critical Role and voice performances; she worked on everything from Dragon Ball Z (playing a variety of the kids, like Trunks) to BloodRayne (voicing Rayne) and The Last of Us Part II (winning a BAFTA for Abby Anderson). Four Sheets to the Wind marked a high point in her live-action career, enlivened further by her interplay with the more stoic Lightning. Podemski is no slouch either, powering through the slog of work-nightlife-work—a cycle that becomes a trap of its own—with an emotional depth that delves beyond her role as her brother’s reflection/omen. She got the most awards attention of the bunch in the wake of the film’s fest run, winning a Sundance prize and earning an Independent Spirit Award nomination.
As an aside, critic Outlaw Vern outlined some of the casting connections running throughout Harjo’s work: “Tamara Podemski, who plays Miri, has a memorable role as Bear’s mom’s cousin Teenie on Reservation Dogs. (Her real life sisters Sarah and Jennifer play Bear’s and Willie Jack’s moms, respectively.) Jon Proudstar, who plays Jim, plays the really funny character Leon on the show, and Richard Ray Whitman (Cufe’s late father) is on several episodes as Old Man Fixico.” It’s a small, tight troupe and it’s reflected in the naturalistic interactions between all the characters.
They navigate a dramedy full of the same kind of throwaway details and flippant asides (that acting teacher I mentioned? Just one of many ridiculous white people making asses of themselves.) that Harjo would later inject into his hit show. Condescending white folks are a staple for non-white American filmmakers, but there’s a special formulation of it deployed by Indigenous filmmakers, slow-cooked by history. This balance of sweet and sour is an early indication of that tonal success the filmmaker would later strike, and the specificity of his observations is a reminder of how universal stories are best told. A parent’s passing and a romantic connection are the inevitabilities of life, things that all of us will fall into; less elemental movements (like leaving home) still strike a chord as a manifestation of a young adult’s yearning need for change. But it all lands better as Four Sheets fully paints its picture of the stoic, bottled-up-until-it-burst dad and the kids trying their damnedest not to follow in his flamed-out footsteps. You might not relate to these characters as viscerally as some folks, but your gut recognizes them as real.
Funnily enough, Four Sheet to the Wind was one of the first “indie” movies I ever saw. I’d never been a cinephile throughout high school. I just saw the same movies as everyone else—those that played the multiplex, those my friends showed me and those my parents had watched when they were kids. This was my first taste of a movie that felt local, something that wasn’t a Movie out of Hollywood but a project some folks from around town put together with their savings and their weekends. It was screened as an example of the funny, sharp, insightful filmmaking coming out of this generation of Indigenous filmmakers, but for me, it was also an example of how a small movie can have the same power as something made on an exponentially larger scale. The only catch is, you have to keep paying it forward, passing on the knowledge of these little gems sitting in the cinematic river, ready for the curious viewer to sift away the silt and muck. This is me handing you the pan and pointing you towards the gold.
Jacob Oller is Movies Editor at Paste Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter at @jacoboller.
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