![]() ![]() But if Through Black Spruce, in all its iterations, wants its audiences to think about Canada’s ugly history, then it should be prepared to interrogate its own genesis as well.Īnnie's story focuses on the young Cree woman's mission to find her sister after she goes missing in Toronto. ![]() ![]() ![]() An Indigenous story packaged for easy consumption by not one but now two non-Indigenous storytellers? It is a bad joke that has been told too many times. This hypothetical may seem like an obvious, easy attempt at dismissing Through Black Spruce. Canadian director Don McKellar ( Last Night, The Grand Seduction) lends highly experienced hands to the effort, but watching Will and Annie’s stories unfold in awkward chunks, and with their identities eternally out of the filmmaker’s psychological grasp whether he likes to acknowledge that truth or not, you cannot help but wonder how the project might have been otherwise steered. To tell the novel’s two intertwined stories – one focusing on Will (Brandon Oakes), an alcoholic Moosonee bush pilot who’s run afoul of drug-runners, the other on Will’s niece Annie (Tanaya Beatty), who’s searching for her missing sister in Toronto – requires an assured directorial sensibility and a sincere understanding of Indigenous history and trauma. Joseph Boyden’s Through Black Spruce was never going to be an easy novel to adapt – even before debates surrounding Boyden’s Indigenous identity cropped up in 2016. ![]()
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