Fire Song Reviews

Does it mildly pain me to take a few knocks against Fire Song? Yes, it does. I mean, how often are you greeted with a film about queer native characters? I’m sure there’s more out there, but they don’t exactly leap out of the film festival circuit limbo into the wider world very often, now do they? It doesn’t hurt that Fire Song feels lived-in and authentic in its depiction of a group living somewhere beyond the societal fringes and trying to scrape by. Yet Fire Song is yet another film where the male character’s personal journey is built upon the dead bodies of feminine ones. First, there’s his sister, she committed suicide an indeterminate amount of time before the narrative begins, then his girlfriend after discovering his bisexuality and being raped by the reservation’s prominent ne’er-do-well. And for a film that’s ostensibly about its main character’s tortured sexuality and love affair, the chemistry between the male leads isn’t quite there. Fire Song overplays the strength of their bond and misdiagnosis what’s so intriguing about it. It’s rare to see the truth of the native experience on film without the filtering of colonialism or historical dressing to keep it all at a remove. Fire Song is squarely modern and it’s interesting to watch these characters struggle to navigate the conservative cultural landscape with the ever encroaching modern world, or find a way to make the two of them work in something resembling harmony.