Fire Song
(Canada, 96 min.)
Written and directed by Adam Garnet Jones
Starring: Andrew Martin, Jennifer Podemski, Harley Legarde,
Mary Galloway
 |
| Andrew Martin and Jennifer Podemski star in Fire Song. |
Fire Song bravely
tells a story of love and death within a tightly knit First Nations community.
The intimacy of the Anishnabe neighbourhood is essential here because each
death of Fire Song takes its toll,
while the close proximity of family and friends tightens this tale of forbidden
love in Northern Ontario. Fire Song
is one of the first Canadian films to offer two-spirited characters as Shane
(Andrew Martin) wrestles with his love for David (Harley Legarde) while keeping
up appearances as boyfriend to Tara (Mary Galloway). Tara’s a perfectly nice
girl, and she’s clearly head-over-heels for Shane, but her college-bound
boyfriend would much rather head to school in Toronto with his boyfriend, who
happens to be a rising star amongst the young residents in the eyes of the bandleaders.
Shane and David profess their love to one another long before Fire Song begins, but their fear of
sharing their love with others only adds to the complexity of life in their
small poverty-stricken community.
Fire Song comes to theatres after hitting the festival circuit last year and while it remains relevant as a unique and even-handed portrait of queer Canadiana, the film enjoys additional urgency given the alarming rise in suicides in communities like Attawapiskat making headlines today. The film is cloaked in death as the ghost of Shane’s sister Destiny (Morteesha Chickekoo-Bannon) haunts the family home six weeks after she took her own life. She literally roams the halls, appearing in ghostly visions to Shane à la Rhymes for Young Ghouls and leaving a lingering melancholy from which their widowed mother, Jackie (Jennifer Podemski), understandably cannot escape.
Shane therefore carries an awfully big load on his
shoulders. The grief of losing his
sister, the responsibility of caring for their mother and maintaining their rundown
home, the burden of hiding his true self, the guilt of betraying Tara, and the
pain of denying his love for David all pile up to a full weight. He shoulders
enough heaviness that he could follow the path of sister and countless other
teens from his community, but Shane’s a young man of great strength and Fire Song admirably depicts how an
ordinary teen like himself survives day by day.
Writer/director Adam Garnet Jones doesn’t sugar coat Shane’s
life, nor does he marinate in misery. Fire
Song simply presents life in small, impoverished First Nations communities
without sentiment or artifice. This realistic and convincing drama gives the
audience a glimpse at the alcoholism, addiction, violence, and hopelessness
that exists in communities like that in which Shane resides, but it also
emphasises life in the face of all the despair that pervades the village. The
film depicts community-based approaches to trauma, like counselling and healing
circles, that help teens cope with their lost friends. Similarly, Jones
introduces elements of tradition, like the smoke that David’s grandmother, Evie
(Ma-Nee Chacaby), wafts through Jackie’s home, or the feather the teens respectfully
pass in their counselling session to grant each other the authority to speak.
Fire Song doesn’t
elaborate upon the elements of Anishnabe culture that arise in the film, nor
does Jones qualify any of the images, rituals, words, or actions that appear.
The film simply lets life be. This choice makes the film immediately
accessible, and one of the better works of self-representation for stories of
First Nations communities in Canadian film.
This refreshing feature debut by Jones makes disquieting use
of realism as the ghosts of dead teens arise in effective ruptures of dramatic
horror, particularly one ghostly kiss that lets one character bid adieu to this
life and move on to the next. The film uses the power of the landscape, too, to
capture the beauty and strength of the natural setting—without a hint of
postcard porn cinematography or “come shoot your American film here” pizazz—while
also accentuating the isolation Shane feels through the engulfing vastness of
the land.
The performances are generally strong with Martin offering a
compelling and dynamic lead. Podemski, bare of any hint of make-up, conveys the
mother’s grief with empathetic pain. The film is a quietly powerful elegy for families
across the land.
Fire Song is now playing in Toronto at the Carlton.
