Worthwhile and thought provoking, both in what it gets right and what could have been

Rating: 7/10 (26 April 2019)

I loved Sicario and Hell or High Water and I overall am glad I finally watched this film as well. It has a compelling story and also relays an important message about the very real national problem of the disappearances of Native American women. The film uses its central mystery to draw us into a broader reflection of the beauty of the reservation, both in the culture and natural beauty within, which are inseparable from each other. But it is also a tragedy, both in the crime against the life of a woman and the historic crime that my country committed against her people, taking their land and so much of their culture. So I appreciate this film and its sensitivity. I would like to see more media exploring these themes.
Jeremy Renner does a great job playing the wise hunter, grieving his own daughter's death under unresolved circumstances. Some of his monologues are a bit forced feeling, but there is a real poetry to his words which is a hallmark of Taylor Sheridan's style.
However, throughout the film I couldn't help thinking of how whites are always in the foreground. In a film about Native Americans, I felt myself continuously wanting to see how the Natives themselves were reacting themselves to the events. If there were an equivalent of the Bechdel test for Native American characters, this film would fail in the sense that there are no scenes not portrayed outside of the view of white actors. Again, as I said, I appreciated the sensitivity of Renner's performance, and the film shows brief flashes of consciousness of the inherent irony of a white man being the protagonist of a film about crimes against Native women.
Still, I feel this film squandered a chance to use a Native lead. It tries to sidestep it by having him as the father of Native children, but I just couldn't help cringing as he explained to the bereaved father about how to grieve his daughter, and to the drug-addled brother about how to clean himself up and pick himself up by his bootstraps.
As a white man, I am accustomed to films where someone who looks like me is the savior, from Dances with Wolves and Last of the Mohicans to The Last Samurai and even Avatar. These themes have already been explored at length. This film does a good job at highlighting the historic crimes that my people committed (and continue to commit) against Native Americans, but I would like to see more celebrating the survival of Natives and seeking answers from their culture, rather than merely offering advice.
This film is powerful and worthwhile as a reflection on the beauty and sadness of the West, but it would have been a true classic for me if it had taken more risk in its storytelling, getting viewers like me out of our comfortable bubble of white lead actors. Because it seeks to profile a current problem, the disappearance of Native American women, as a continuation of the historic crime against their people, they should be able to be more active participants in the narrative rather than supporting actors.