Hello Destroyer 2016
written and directed by Kevan Funk
Hello Destroyer was the last film of the TIFF Top 10 showing in Vancouver tonight, simultaneously with a screening in Toronto. That meant that the director wasn't able to attend, but there were 5 guests for the post screening Q&A - one of the producers, Haydn Wazelle, and other members of the cast: Sara Canning, Kurt Max Runte, Paul McGillion, and drum roll ....future most valuable NDN player....Joe Buffalo.
It's a hockey movie, but mostly it's a movie about the toxic trap of masculinity. Working title of this could have been "It's Hard Being a Hockey Boy", because holy shit it is! Guys have it rough, and they are brutal with each other, and especially brutal engaging in their sport, and to those of their sex who don't keep to the gender lines.
The movie uses the milieu of junior hockey to show how tragically narrow the acceptable parameters that comprise masculine identity are, and the terrible toll such restrictive roles can take. Also the ruthless capitalism and exploitive nature of sports and industry as a whole is an overarching theme.
In the Q&A, I asked if the inclusion of native iconography in the film was deliberately provocative and the producer said yeah. The team is called The Warriors, and there's a scene in the beginning where the game star is given a headdress regalia to wear in the locker room after the game as a reward for his prowess as a player. bleagh. There's also a character who is NDN - my fav - played in his first feature role by the wonderfully understated and emotive Joe Buffalo. He's one of the few characters allowed to show compassion for the hockey boy sundered from his team. After I asked my question about the Native content - he threw it back to me - saying he loved that the team was called The Warriors because a Warrior is a good thing to be, and of course for us NDN's, hell yeah that's f'n right on :D He asked me what I would have them be called. I said I didn't know, but then in that so common way, after the moment had passed, my answer came to me - I would have used Spartans - since they were famous for sacrificing the members of their tribe no longer deemed useful.
It was a sad sad f'n film, and how could it be anything but - the commodification and exploitation of athletes and the dearth of allowable human expression our society affords for male identity is so detrimental to the psyches of our men, and that our boys are currently learning how to contort and suppress their natural human impulses and needs in order to become the men this system demands is the most pressing and ongoing disaster our society collectively faces - see TRUMP.
More of that provocative NDN content in this scene:
I believe it's getting released in March. Not sure how wide, or if that's a theatrical run, or on a streaming platform or what, but however it plays, you'll get your chance to see it this spring.
