Product Description

While in college, Spokane Reservation best friends Aristotle and Seymour took different paths. Aristotle went back to "the rez," while Seymour began a new life for himself as an openly gay poet. Sixteen years later, the two are reunited, but mutual feelings of hurt and resentment stand in the way of their friendship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27346 in DVD
• Brand: Genius
• Released on: 2003-07-08
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 103 minutes

Amazon.com
As seen in this ambitious low-budget feature, The Business of Fancydancing can be very tricky indeed. Shot on digital video, the directorial debut of novelist-poet Sherman Alexie is both profound and problematic, embracing the emotional legacy of Alexie's Native American heritage (and the rich layers of his literary work) while displaying the stylistic pitfalls of a first-time effort. What emerges, most effectively, is the bicultural identity crisis faced by many Native Americans--in this case a celebrated gay poet named Seymour (played by Evan Adams, costar of the Alexie-scripted Smoke Signals) whose ambitions transcend the "Rez" (reservation) where he was raised. Though occasionally hobbled by amateur performances, this is a deeply moving drama about reconciling one's birthright with a quest for new horizons, and Alexie poses difficult questions without settling on trite or convenient answers. For anyone who has ever felt removed from their cultural background, this Business offers a resonant ring of truth. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Lyrical, angry, and honest
Although the pacing is choppy, "The Business of Fancydancing" is haunting and powerful. Successful poet Seymour Polatkin returns to his rez for a friend's funeral and faces harsh criticism for the way he used his people for his subjects, then abandoned them. Evan Adams as Seymour is humorous, sly, confused, and finally shattered by his choices. Strong performances by Gene Tagaban as Aristotle Joseph, who serves as Seymour's conscience, and Swil Kanim as Mouse, the mocking, witty friend who dies. He's also a superb violinist. Michele St. John shines as Seymour's early love interest and indigenous singer who has chosen to live on the rez.
Alexie mocks himself as he poses the question, "What's it like when you talk and white people listen?"
I recommend this film to anyone who wants to understand cultural disjointedness and search for self-identity.

UNDERSTANDING AND ACCEPTANCE
The first key is to first face the issues. Before you can do that you must admit these issues exist. Sherman helps bring these issues up front, in your face. I find in talking to people about this film, the ones that do NOT like it are homophobics. People also have a hard time watching two Indians beat up a white guy. But these things happen every day. We are not painted red men sitting on a pony. We are all human, and Sherman shows us in all our glory, pettiness, anger, desperation, and most private moments.
The interviewer was the woman I didn't like. I didn't "get" her purpose. In talking to my girlfriend she said we're not supposed to like her, that my girlfriend has seen white people talking to me in this manner. The interviewer is every non-Indian that wants to put the Indian in their place. Knowing this helps when you watch the movie.
I find Gene, Evan, Swil and Michelle breaking all the stereotypes. They are mixed blood, they are gay, they are recovering alcoholics, they are amazing musicians, teachers, and you want to love them for all they are and all they are not.

One of the best films I've ever had the pleasure of viewing
It will probably be little known to many white folks who haven't spent a fair amount of time amongst the Native population or else on its fringes, but these depictions are pretty much mainstream. The way imagination, dream, and thoughts blend seamlessly with the "real-word" of flesh and stone, is telling, but closer to the intense world view that is here for the waking and dreaming.

The musical creativity was perfectly astounding, both the writing and performances/improvisations, ditto the sound editing, photography, and film editing. And the director used real people rather than trained actors - their stories thus meshed in a genuine way, exposing real native issues without even a hint of sugar-coating.

Some reviewers felt it was choppy - I experienced it as smooth. Sometimes the poetry was a bit unappealing, but that was, after all, part of what gave teeth to the story. The [perceived choppiness] might have been a response as part of the actuality of the rez experience and the "Indian' world view, along with the social interactivity of the personalities of Aristotle, Seymour, Mouse, and the rest. It's clearly not a defect of the screenwriting or the direction of the film. The film has a wonderful pace and rhythm throughout.

Yes, the content is intentionally disturbing - then again maybe not intentionally - in the sense that it's not a contrivance, it doesn't come off that way. It's more the way things could/would naturally move and develop given the circumstances - there's nothing even remotely implausible here.

An unstated theme is the way the scenes seem to reel around - so much like the experience of fancy dancing. This style of powwow dancing/costuming that was at its height around the time the principals in this story would have been coming of age. (Currently - grass dancing for boys and young men, and jingle dancing for girls and young women - are the newer, more prevalent styles). And we can't forget one of the fiddle pieces Mouse intermittently plays (along with the classical and emotionally wrenching distillations of powwow or medicine songs) - it sounds like a reel to me, maybe even the famous Virginia Reel. In a most essential way, the collection of intermittent fancy dance sequences and related songs and recitations - always filmed in darkness, as if in an imaginative sphere/space - this is an underlying modus operandi of the story and of its depiction.

Mouse's violin improvisations are a wonder to behold. Some of the imaginative sequences with him and Seymour or Aristotle were brilliant cross-cultural and/or intensely revealing re-inventions of the traditional native performance practices. And there is some of the best improvisational-style singing I have heard in any genre - even to the point of surpassing many of the better flamenco singers.

Aristotle [in both his singing and his acting] was particularly skillful at portraying every emotional nuance, from searing intensity to the subtle, profoundly spiritual - such that the experiences depicted may be felt to jump right out from the screen and to swirl around the viewer. And it's part of who the actor is depicting that he is totally fluid - uncanny, almost unpredictable in the way he moves from one state to the next - a thorough master like Coyote [the trickster god/goddess], and never ever unconvincing.

And finally - to the credit of the project as a whole, special effects are never overly blatant, which is the way one should proceed when glimpsing this culture where everything is as it seems. (Yeah right, there's always something seething just beneath the surface, just before the next event is to occur.) This is not one person's story, but is rather a collection of anecdotal knowledge, visionary gleanings, where oftentimes one person's dream fades into another's reality, and wondering are they the same?

There are some astounding depictions of shared experiences of two or more people, more candid and potent than the average well-scrubbed Hollywood actors ever come close to reaching into. Witness the brief love scenes; and one of the deleted scenes, where Aristotle and Mouse's blonde ex-girlfriend are having a long conversation - call it a confrontation.

And when the women sing, solo or in pairs/ensembles!!!!!!