Silent Tongue (1994)

               This isn’t so much a movie as it is a bunch of ideas that Sam Shepherd had rolling around in his brain that ended up lasting just under 102 minutes when laid out on screen one after another. During the opening credits to what we’re going to keep calling a movie I vaguely recognized his name as being important. Since I don’t come from a theater background, I had to read up afterwards about all of the awards he won and famous collaborators he worked with. I’ve never seen any of his plays, never seen any of his acting performances, and I don’t think I’ve listened to any of the numerous songs either by or about him. Based on the synopses of his works I’ve now read I can carefully say that I don’t think his stuff is entirely to my taste, especially his earlier, more Theater of the Absurd plays. Most of the rest of them seem to directly grapple with what were then-contemporary issues and I’d be worried they’d seem like time capsules.

              What I do know is that I would never have guessed about his reputation or fame based only on this movie, because it’s terrible. Reading contemporary articles and interviews written in the lead up to its release I can absolutely see the makings of something interesting. In a profile with the L.A. Times he talks about the geography of the part of New Mexico where the movie is set as determining its history, how it’s this mostly-barren flat plain that forced people to march across it unable to hide from pursuers, how attempting to cultivate crops was pointless, that it was still fairly lawless in 1893, all interesting stuff. He apparently became inspired to write the movie after studying Wild West medicine shows, which makes sense because a huge chunk of the movie is just watching a set of performers playing to an indifferent audience all leading up to a sales pitch despite none of it really having anything to do with the plot of the movie. It may or may not have anything to do with the film’s themes because I was unable to ascertain what they were or indeed whether there were any. Based on Shepherd’s other works I’m going to assume there were, but if so he wasn’t able to convey them to me through the medium of the moving picture.

              Much became clear when I realized that the movie was produced with French funding. They fucking love weirdo American aesthetes in France. The movie was filmed in 1992 but wasn’t released until February of 1994. It got pretty bad reviews, and during its segment on “Siskel & Ebert” they spend almost the whole time talking about how lost and bored they were for the entire film. I’m very confused by its history on home video, from what I can tell it was only released on VHS and later pan-and-scan dvd, which at the time of writing goes for anywhere between $10 and $20 on Ebay. However I was also able to locate a 720p Spanish language rip with the correct aspect ratio on one of those Russian streaming sites, so who the hell knows. This lack of availability is actually rather lucky for the movie since I can’t insult the visuals too much without admitting I didn’t watch the movie as intended. You win this one, Shepherd.

              The cast is interesting. If I have to pick I’ll say that Richard Harris as concerned father Prescott Roe is the main character, not because he has the most screen time but because his actions drive the plot. The medicine show that takes up the first third of the movie features Dermot Mulroney as Reeves McCree, son of the owner and chief salesman of the show Eamon McCree, played by Alan Bates. Mulroney’s been in plenty of things people know, including ‘Living in Oblivion,’ ‘Zodiac,’ and apparently he was all over “Secret Invasion.” Bates was in a number of classic films like ‘Women in Love,’ ‘Zorba the Greek,’ and won an Oscar for his role in 1968’s ‘The Fixer.’ They’re both just terrible here, with Mulroney stiff and stilted and Bates dialed all the way up to incomprehensibility. Sheila Tousey has what should be a meaty dual role as the twin Native American daughters of Eamon McCree, one of whom is a ghost, but other than showing some impressive riding moves and jumping in and out of trees she mostly just watches the white people talk at her.

              The last actor in the movie is River Phoenix, who died of a drug overdose between the film’s completion and its release. These days he’s more of a footnote to the career of his younger brother Joaquin, but he was considered one of his generation’s finest actors back in the day. His death was legitimately shocking, front-page news, and some of us have been mad at Johnny Depp for his murky involvement in Phoenix’s accidental overdose long before the rest of his bullshit came out. Everyone else in the movie is a demonstrably good actor reduced to mediocrity at best under Shepherd’s direction so it shouldn’t come as a shock that Phoenix is awful here, but at least with the other actors I could tell what they were trying to do. In this movie he plays Talbot Roe, son of Harris’s character and the cause of what we’re going to call the plot of the movie, and I have no idea what’s going on with him other than general craziness. Before I watched this movie I was amazed that the last completed film by River Phoenix was commercially unavailable, but now I kind of understand.

              It’s almost 20 minutes into the movie before something like a plot starts. The sequence of events that open the film are as follows: River Phoenix as Talbot looks dirty and crazy underneath a tree. He shoots a bird, rips its wings off, then rubs them on a woman’s corpse. We watch Harris’s Prescott lead some horses under the opening credits and eventually he arrives at the outskirts of a medicine show. We then watch a couple of acts, including one by famous clowns Bill Irwin and David Shiner. We see Tousey’s Awbonnie perform some pretty impressive horse stunts for far too long. We’re shown Mulroney’s Reeves getting his father ready to go on stage, trying to get a drunk Eamon in shape to perform. Bate’s Eamon stumbles in front of the crowd, swigging from the bottle of snake oil he’s selling, borderline-incomprehensible between the Irish brogue he’s laying on and the torrent of words he’s letting fly. Prescott watches all of this.

              Finally the show wraps up and we start to get some exposition. It turns out that several years previously Eamon had swapped Prescott one of his Native American daughters for three horses. From what I can tell the movie never gives us her name. He purchased the girl to be Talbot’s wife in an effort to help with his son’s mental problems. Prescott then tells him that she ended up dying in childbirth and his son is inconsolable. He refuses to leave his wife’s body and doesn’t eat or sleep while he watches over her, thus the nonsense with River Phoenix at the beginning. Eamon starts to protest that it’s far too late for a refund, but Prescott instead tells him that he’s interested in buying the other daughter as it’s the only thing he can think of that might help his son.

The master salesman at work.

              So right from the jump I hate pretty much everyone involved in this. The movie reserves most of its judgement for the character of Eamon for pretty good reasons but it doesn’t have much good to say about anyone else either. Even Reeves, who becomes incredibly angry when he learns that his father is negotiating the sale of his only remaining half-sister, went along with the first trade for his other sister. I can’t even excuse Talbot because however mentally ill he may or may not have been his wife’s ghost openly hates him and I’m going to trust her judgement.

              After fighting about the sale with his son, Eamon suggests to Prescott that they continue negotiations the next day. We then cut to Talbot, who’s confronted by his wife’s ghost. And by ghost I mean the actress with a thick line of paint down the middle of her face with one side made up to look vaguely zombie-ish. I guess $8.5 million in French money doesn’t get you much in the way of special effects. She claims that she’s ready for the afterlife but his grief is keeping her tied to the earthly plane. She wants him to burn her body but he doesn’t want to.

              The next morning Awbonnie is walking her horse when Prescott comes up behind her and slams a bag over her head. Apologizing all the while he binds her hands, sticks her on a horse, and they both ride off towards his son. A performer in the medicine show witnesses all of this but doesn’t do anything. After some confusion Eamon and Reeves head off after them, mostly because Awbonnie’s horse act is one of the main draws for their show.

              During all of this the movie slips in a flashback that explains the title of the movie and it’s very unpleasant. It’s a couple of decades ago as we see Eamon and a young Reeves who’s maybe six years old being brought by what seems to be a trapper to a huge expanse of dirt covered in bones.  A lone Native American woman with a big black stripe painted across her mouth is leading a horse pulling some kind of skid across the dirt. The trapper refers to her as a ‘bone picker’ and explains her name is Silent Tongue because she had her tongue cut out for lying to her headman. The trapper ominously invites Eamon to try his luck because “She won’t make a sound.” The movie genuinely seems to think that not having a tongue makes you fully mute. Eamon tells the trapper to keep his son from watching then chases her as she starts running away. The trapper makes Reeves watch as the inevitable happens.

              I will give the movie some credit as this isn’t completely ignored for the rest of the movie. Despite showing no remorse for anything else he does in the movie, Eamon does awaken from this dream flashback yelling about how he made the woman his legitimate wife so that makes it ok. He later admits that she ran away after the birth of her daughters, so at least he didn’t murder her. Later in the movie, as he descends into madness, he keeps insisting on this point, that making her his wife absolves him, and the movie ends with his capture by a group of Native Americans who seem to be taking him to Silent Tongue for revenge, but it never really justifies having her name as the title.

              All of this setup is the first forty minutes of the movie. The next thirty is just everyone bumbling around the plain, accomplishing nothing. Awbonnie escapes, then she’s recaptured, then Prescott promises to pay her what he was going to pay Eamon which would secure her independence from her terrible father, and she agrees. Reeves and Eamon slowly lose the supplies they brought with them, then Eamon loses his horse, and finally Reeves leaves the film in disgust. Seriously, his character is last seen at the seventy-seven-minute mark riding away from his father and is never seen or spoken of again. Hell, the medicine show performers get a little three-minute goodbye at the end but he doesn’t get anything. Meanwhile Talbot’s ghost wife is telling him to kill himself. She wants him to destroy her body, but if he can’t do that then he should die and let her go. He almost does it but can’t bring himself to pull the trigger.

              The last half hour of the movie is slow, dull nonsense. After they ride most of the way there Prescott hangs back from the tree where Talbot is hanging out with his wife’s body and sends Awbonnie ahead alone, saying that all his son needs is “a voice, a kindness.” How very helpful. She rides up to the tree and startles a very ill-looking Talbot. He starts to point his gun at her but then puts it down, visibly confused. The tree is a neat little location, a lone twisty growth seemingly alone on the horizon that’s had a ton of bird and animal bones strung from its branches. I think the copy I watched is a rip of a dvd transfer of the VHS so the sound design of the original print was not exactly well preserved, but the clacking and knocking of the bones serves as pretty decent background texture.

              I’d love to say it gets interesting here, but it does not. Talbot and Awbonnie just kind of stare at each other until nightfall. The ghost shows up to fuck with them a little bit, she attacks her sister and tells her how disappointed she in her for selling her out and also asks why her sale price was one horse higher than hers. I guess we can’t even like the ghost in this. Then she messes with Eamon, which is fun, frightening him off of his horse and leading directly to his death, but then we’re right back to the confusion under the tree.

              The ghost attacks Prescott and drives him to join the others. She rides a horse around the fire, taunting them, then Prescott notices that Talbot isn’t protecting his wife’s body during all of this and takes the opportunity to throw it on the fire. Talbot tries to stop him but Prescott yells really loud at the camera then slams it down on the flames. Talbot pauses, looks down at himself as if surprised, and that’s your movie, folks.

              Oh, there’s still ten minutes of the film left, but it’s all denouement. We check back in with the now-leaderless medicine show, confirm that Eamon has been captured by Native Americans and is being brought to his probable doom, and we watch Prescott and Eamon walking beside each other towards the horizon, presumably home. We never get a scene showing what Talbot’s like when he’s normal, this is all the closure we get.

It's not completely ugly.

              There are some other things I could talk about with the movie, like a very slightly recurring character (we see him twice) pushing a laden wheelbarrow across the plains in the background of a couple of scenes. I will absolutely guarantee you that Shepherd read a description of such a person and just decided to shove him in somewhere. The credits refer to him as The Lone Man, which I’m sure is all kinds of symbolic. Alan Bates is the only one in the movie who’s even close to entertaining, and most of that comes from watching him force his already at-a-10 performance up through the top of the scale as his character loses his mind during the chase. Early on he’s complaining about running out of bottles of his tonic, which is clearly mainly alcohol so it’s possible that he slips into the DTs. The movie also implies it’s caught up with his guilt over Silent Tongue or something, it’s very hard to make out the intent of whatever Bates is saying. Suffice it to say his fate doesn’t provide any sense of resolution to the movie.

              Sam Shepherd spent his early career crafting avant-garde one-act plays and it’s hard not to see a little bit of that here. We’re invited into a small world and confronted with some strange characters and not given pat answers at the end. If you buy a ticket to see a new production at a trendy new theater in 1971 you know that’s what you’re getting, the same sensibility doesn’t really translate to multiplexes. It doesn’t help that this is only the second movie Shepherd directed and he’s clearly not very good at it. Phoenix was either given bad direction or told to just do whatever he wanted because his sections are utterly unintelligible. I don’t think the premise is a good one, and although a good movie can be made about almost anything I doubt anything decent could come out of this script. This is officially described as a horror-western and only half of that adjective is true. If you’re a big fan of River Phoenix who wants to see his final completed performance you might be tempted to seek this out. I am going to counsel against it. This is such an insubstantial nothing of a movie that I’m a little annoyed I didn’t just stare at my computer background for the same length of time instead of watching the damn thing.