A bumpy, interesting ride in ‘The Unknown Country’
The film’s exploration of ‘Middle America’ is at its best when it lets Lily Gladstone take the wheel.
What are we looking for when we hit the road without a destination, and what do we look for in road-trip movies that attempt to tackle that question? Sometimes it can be as simple as taking in the romantic sentimentality of the journey — two people sharing a silent cup of coffee in a diner, swinging around a well-worn dance floor, sipping cheap beer and bad whiskey in a half-empty bar. Sometimes, though, we're looking for something deeper. The Unknown Country is the latest film to explore the space in between.
Death, celebration or boredom typically serve as the catalysts for a good road trip; here, it's a mix of all three. The film begins with Tana, played by Lily Gladstone (Blackfeet/Nimiipuu), warming up her recently deceased grandmother’s white Cadillac on a very cold Minnesota morning. Her cousin has asked her to come to South Dakota for her wedding. Tana is reluctant, but in reality, the distraction of the trip is just what she needs to help process her grief. As she begins her journey toward reconnection, a Conoco sign reads, “Welcome to Mid-America,” providing an unsubtle hint at the story about to unfold. Tana will eventually decide to retrace her grandmother’s steps back to Big Bend in West Texas. The story is simple; the actual narrative is found, as it is in life, in the stops she makes along the way.
The film is undeniably a Gladstone vehicle, and she carries it. Her face is that of an observer. Each time she drags on her cigarette, you can see her mind trying to make sense of her surroundings. The film feels like a docufiction: It stops along the way to tell the backstories of the Midwestern people Tana comes across on her travels; we see them in their daily lives as they narrate their own short histories via voiceover. The plot device walks a fine line between fascination and exploitation.
The Indigenous characters here and their stories, though, feel authentic. It’s the white flyover-state characters' stories that waver between sharing their authenticity and “let’s ask these eccentric-looking people questions and record their answers.” A sweet diner waitress with very tired eyes, the owner of a motel in the middle of nowhere, a zestful convenience store cashier — they are all interesting people. While the three character types are staples of the road-trip genre, the idea here is that these are people whose stories are never told in full. And, after all, part of the charm of hitting the road is the chance of meeting interesting people, someone who will take you outside your own lived experience and introduce you to one of the strange nooks hidden in our shared society. It is not the world inhabited by the luxury vacation-goers at the White Lotus.
In the end, though, these stops along the way and the telling of Middle America’s stories slowed the momentum for me. It reads a bit too much like the impressions of an East or West Coaster engrossed by the eccentric people they encounter while driving across the country. Sure, these people have stories that ought to be told, but perhaps they belong in a different film, a different genre — maybe even in an actual documentary. For me, the most affecting segments of the movie occur in its first half, when we're working our way home with Tana — though that part of also has its awkward moments.
When I’m watching a film by a non-Indigenous writer, it's not hard to recognize the lines written by a white person for an Indigenous actor. One such line appears to be uttered by a cousin who is looking out the window on a drive across her rez: “It’s so pretty here … the Great Plains.” It sounds like something a visitor would say. White Americans often speak of land by region: The West, the Midwest, The Great Plains, et cetera. Growing up as a Comanche/Muscogee Native in southern Oklahoma, I have never once spoke like that about my own homelands, “Don’t you just love the southern plains region of America?”
I can’t imagine a Lily Gladstone film being anything but honest.
Generally, when non-Indigenous people write and direct stories about Indigenous people, I am skeptical; they almost always project their own stereotypical ideas of what it means to be Indigenous — as if that has a single answer — onto their Native characters, often thinking they are standing up for our rights, or something. This film doesn’t feel like that, however, and the explanation might be as simple as the fact that Gladstone has a story credit here. I can’t imagine a Lily Gladstone film being anything but honest. I’ve listened to her speak about her art and the Indigenous narrative at large. The actor is an artist as articulate, authentic and intelligent as they come.
Indigenous cinema is still working to achieve the foothold it deserves in the industry. Meanwhile, the road-trip genre remains a relatively consistent place to find solid Native stories —Powwow Highway, Smoke Signals and Barking Water, for example. And as a film genre, Indigenous cinema — true Indigenous cinema made by Indigenous people — is still a small corner of the industry. Road-trip movies are, in the end, about the search for some sort of truth and resolution. The Unknown Country explores what it means to make such a film with Indigenous people, telling their authentic stories while seeking something greater. Here, there’s a little something for everyone in the journey.
Jason Asenap is a Comanche and Muscogee Creek writer and director (and an occasional actor) based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We welcome reader letters. Email High Country News at [email protected] or submit a letter to the editor. See our letters to the editor policy.
