Spidersecu
Don't Believe the Hype
Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Guillelmina
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
just_me-02247
Rhymes for Young Ghouls is a difficult but very important story I believe every Canadian should watch. It poignantly captures the anger of a system that leaves one powerless; it is artful, relentless, and occasionally funny. Harsh reality blends with magical realism as the film explores themes of childhood vs. adulthood, power vs. powerlessness, and forgetting vs. remembering.As a non-Indigenous viewer I can't speak to how accurately it describes life on a reservation during the time of residential schools, but the daily challenges of the community, terrors of residential schools and relationship with the Indian Agent ring true to so many of the stories shared by elders at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Metis writer Chelsea Vowel writes in "Why Every Canadian Should Watch Rhymes for Young Ghouls" that it "is not just a film. It is a glimpse into something none of us really want to see but must face". I appreciated her review on CBC:"For me, the familiarity of the events: alcoholism leading to accidental death, suicide, incarceration, poverty, the vulnerability of having only illegal means to keep oneself and one's family safe, the brooding presence of the residential school; all of it evoked a litany of statistics that are all too real in too many indigenous communities. Even though it is a work of fiction, and some facts were blended for dramatic reasons, every single event portrayed has happened, and is happening in our communities. And this should be what haunts all Canadians. The fact that this film was set in the 70's, when my parents were young adults on their way to starting our family, affected me in a way I could have never expected. It was too close for comfort. I was born in that decade. This is far from being ancient history.The absolute power of the Indian agent highlighted in this film at first seems implausible. That is, until you learn about the history of the Indian Act. The power of the Indian agent to withhold rations and blankets, resulting in the deaths of indigenous people in the late 1800's, was not lessened, but merely changed form with every Indian Act amendment, well into the late 20thcentury.Was there ever an Indian agent this corrupt, this vile, this abusive? Perhaps not in exactly the same way as portrayed in this film, but based on the stories that exist in indigenous communities, this character is not wholly unbelievable. The system created to give power to Indian agents created the perfect opportunity for abuse of that power."
(http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/why-every-canadian-should-watch-rhymes-for-young-ghouls-1.2687357)At times the writing and scene transitions are a little rough, but it seems to work with the rough storyline and the incredible acting more than makes up for it. I would recommend this film to all Canadians- it is neither resoundingly hopeful or hopeless, but a haunting telling of Canada's seldom-told history.
An Jones
Characters depicted as nothing but unstable, which is odd. I wanted to find the good in them too (compassion, simple etiquette, consciousness) but I haven't. They can be 'just a bunch of savages' to non-natives. The narrative fails to explain the cause of tthe drug-dealing, violence, prostitution, and constant profanity within the community. I already knew that those were the consequences among natives due to residential/day schooling, but I don't know if me not knowing that in the movie is explicable to my autism, which leads to my point of ableist language that is failed tto be addressed within the movie. (A male character says 'that is so f****** retarded. The female one exclaims 'you two are the dumbest Indian since bugs bunny puts on a headdress'-a combo of that and internalized racism. Girl, they're HIGH! I thought you would know that after years of selling weed! I haven't even touched weed and I know that weed causes extreme fatigue over time! Dafuq!)These people don't even have the common decency to withhold profanity in front of kids! Heck! They even drunk drive with the kids! Why wouldn't they let the kids spend the night somewhere? They're not smart enough to? And what is with the overuse of the F word? They rot my brain by just cussing too much. I know everyone isn't perfect, but all of them are the crack of the barrel! And they had to be extra by throwing that random Wendigo tale in just to make me even more disgusted with the movie!I'm African American. I lived in the 'ghettos', but the last thing I want is us to be depicted as nothing and nothing but extreme (unwise) caricatures (like this movie does to Amerindians). I'm not a child but there are too many G/PG movies that address native American issues in an apparently Eurocentric or colonist mindset. The movie could have been the exception that is appropriate for EVERYONE at ANY AGE to understand. But no; I guess there is a very foolish saying 'you can't explain your reality to a child.' Says who!
mote99
It has a flaw or two, but this debut feature from Native Canadian Jeff Barnaby is very, very good. Think "Mean Streets" meets "Dance Me Outside" with a little bit of magic realism sprinkled in, and you'll get a sense of how this film works. It's probably the best First Nations film I've seen since "Smoke Signals," back in 1998."Rhymes for Young Ghouls" follows the story of Aila, a parent-less teenage girl living on a Mi'kmaq reservation in Canada during the 1970s. To help make ends meet, she sells marijuana with her uncle to the local pot smokers on the reserve. This draws the attention of Popper, a sociopathic federal Native Agent who takes much pleasure in tormenting and beating Mi'kmaq people like Aila and her friends. Nobody can sell marijuana on the reserve unless Popper gets his cut of the profits.Much of the film plays like a dark visual poem, and the imagery and cinematography are very strong. Barnaby lifts some of his imagery and ideas from Mi'kmaq culture, pop culture, horror movies, and what is probably personal experience from growing up on a reservation himself."Rhymes for Young Ghouls" gets a big thumbs up from me. This is an impressive debut feature film, and I look forward to seeing Mr. Barnaby's future projects.
Gage Diabo
Movies that receive lasting attention tend to fall into two, non-mutually exclusive categories: Important Movies, which are significant but not necessarily good, and Great Movies, which are good but not necessarily significant. Rhymes for Young Ghouls is undoubtedly an Important Movie, but it is certainly not a Great Movie. Rhymes for Young Ghouls is Mi'kmaq director Jeff Barnaby's first feature and, despite the honest praise it has generated through festival engagements and local word-of-mouth, it shows. Although the typical plot synopsis makes the film's narrative seem relatively undaunting—simplistic, even—Barnaby's screenplay is far from a straightforward affair. Aila (Davery Jacobs) lives on the Red Crow reserve in the constant shadow of the residential school system, represented by a tyrannical, corrupt, and paedophilic Indian Affairs agent named Popper (an ethnically-ambiguous Mark Antony Krupa). Her mother (Roseanne Supernault) is dead, having committed suicide after accidentally running over Aila's baby brother during a drunken outing, and her father (Glen Gould) has spent most of her childhood away in prison, having taken the blame for the incident. Under the loose guidance of her shifty uncle Burner (Brandon Oakes), she runs a pot-dealing circuit, furnishing artisan-crafted joints for weekly Bacchanalian gatherings at her family's deserted compound, until her father's unexpected reappearance throws the entire operation into jeopardy and drags Popper violently back into the picture. That much of a setup would have been simple enough to support the film's central revenge plot against Popper and the residential school system. Rhymes for Young Ghouls, however, does itself the unfortunate disservice of extending its plot and characters too far for its 88-minute runtime to contain. The entire film plays like a garbled, heavily-condensed version of much longer and presumably more fleshed-out screenplay. Barnaby's script throws around too many inadequately-drawn characters and off-screen backstory in its opening minutes for the audience to reasonably follow (the thick rez accents affected by the main characters only aggravates the issue), making the remainder of the plot nigh on incomprehensible, even after a second viewing. Aila, for instance, has two stoner sidekicks, Sholo and Angus, whose personalities, relationships, and significance to the plot are sped through in one breakneck exchange of dialogue. There is also a grandmother figure, who inexplicably claims to not even be Aila's real grandmother and whose only ostensible purpose is to front Aila's grow-op and to slow down the narrative with a blatantly reflexive interlude of oral history. There is a big difference between ambiguity and incoherence, and this film veers decisively into the latter territory.Assuming that the narrative itself isn't also some kind of similarly-allegorical Thomas King-esque pastiche of oral history-—which I think would be giving Barnaby way too much credit—-the way that Rhymes for Young Ghouls plays out relies far too heavily on convenience and loose ends to work in the manner that a plot-driven picture like this requires. Popper, his henchmen, and the residential school for which they work as enforcers are initially painted as some kind of insurmountable menace on the Red Crow reserve, and yet both Aila and her kindergarten-aged protégé are apparently able to slip through their clutches and to walk right out of the residential school without any opposition whatsoever. Aila's father receives so many bludgeons to the face by the end of the film that it is a wonder he doesn't die of severe head trauma. I get the impression that Rhymes for Young Ghouls is desperately trying to tell me something or to make some kind of crucial point, but, even after two viewings, I still can't bother to trudge through the quagmire of its plot long enough to be able to engage with it at any deeper level. I'm all for a film that demands work from the audience to arrive at some semblance of meaning, but I draw the line at this one.This is not to say that the film offers nothing of value. To be fair, I'm almost willing to forgive Rhymes for Young Ghouls' narrative shortcomings on the sheer strength of its performances and its virtuosic visuals. Devery Jacobs, without exactly knocking it out the park and lacking the charisma to effectively carry the film, surely deserves the accolades she's received for the angsty reticence she brings to her role. Michel St. Martin, a thus-far undistinguished cinematographer, shot this film and infuses it with some truly unforgettable images; there is both tremendous beauty and unflinching horror in this film. The opening credits sequence, consisting of a slow-motion tracking shot of drunken Indians being savagely beaten by Popper's henchmen outside of a strip club while the Black Keys play on the soundtrack, teases the audience with the promise of a masterful slice of pure cinema that, sadly, the film's garbled plot fails to follow up on. Although it is impossible not to roll one's eyes at Jeff Barnaby's repeated comparisons of the film to the likes of Inglourious Basterds and A Clockwork Orange (one of the characters even throws out the word "horrorshow" at one point), it is not a stretch to wonder if, with a tighter narrative and richer characterization, Barnaby and company could have come close.Rhymes for Young Ghouls, while not a Great Film, will hopefully come to be widely recognized as an Important Film and open the floodgates for more mainstream projects by aboriginal artists. Although, as a tale of the unspeakable horrors of the residential school system in Canada, Rhymes for Young Ghouls pales in comparison to those of indigenous novelists like Thompson Highway, Richard Wagamese, Eden Robinson and Joseph Boyden, it is a clear step in the right direction that Barnaby's film has sparked further dialogue about Canada's dark past, both domestically and internationally. I may not be particularly sold on it, but, ideologically, I'm loath to wish failure upon it; if this is where First Nations cinema is going, I eagerly await to see where it finally ends up.
