Posts
In preparation for the release today of the Bruce Springsteen biopic about recording his 1982 album “Nebraska,” I rewatched “The Indian Runner,” Sean Penn’s 1991 directorial debut inspired by a song from that same album. The song was “Highway Patrolman,” telling the story of two brothers, Joe and Frankie Roberts (respectively, David Morse and Viggo Mortensen in the movie), the former a calm family man and a state trooper, the latter a hothead prone to violence, putting a macabre spin on the chestnut Family First by charting how their relationship comes to a head. The song itself is starkly presented, just Springsteen and his guitar and harmonica, a touch of mandolin, but Penn lays “The Indian Runner” on thick with frequent bouts of ominous slow motion and scads of portentous symbolism that strive and fail to create something mythic. (He also tags the movie with a quote to ensure we don’t miss the conclusion’s point, demonstrating a lack of trust in the viewer that grinds my gears.) Penn honors the details of the verses but also fleshes them out, adding characters, a mother (Sandy Dennis) and father (Charles Bronson) for the brothers and a wife (Patricia Arquette) for Frankie, adding an extra layer of irony to Springsteen’s key observation that a man who turns his back on his family “ain’t no good.”
On the other hand, Penn eschews trying to visually translate the chorus, the one about Joe and Frankie taking turns dancing with Joe’s future wife Maria (Valeria Golino in the film) “as the band played Night of the Johnstown Flood.” It’s as beautiful a lyric as Springsteen ever composed, and maybe Penn knew he couldn’t do it justice, but it also speaks to what’s missing from “The Indian Runner”: just the tiniest crack of light. It is a morose experience, perhaps reflective of a writer/director it is said once smoked four packs a day. Brief montages of happiness feel forced, ostensible beatific images of Joe and his family skew oddly mournful, and though Bronson’s powerful performance as Mr. Roberts initially seems to suggest a hard-won peace with the world, that peace proves a lie.
Frankie’s father has essentially written his son off as a lost cause and you can understand why. He’s a real nasty piece of work, played by Mortensen as such, giving even his few moments of grace the feel of a sly-grinned con. He’s virtually impossible to like and that’s the point: Penn wants to put us in the headspace of Joe, to grapple with the struggle of offering love and protection to someone so unworthy of it. I appreciate that approach, but there is an appreciable lack of tension between the brothers and no genuine sense of their deep roots that renders this central relationship inert. I can’t imagine Penn didn’t see the two sides of himself in Joe and Frankie and meant it as a manifestation of such, and it’s why the whole time I was watching, even if 1991 technology might have made it impossible, I wished Penn would have gone full Michael B. Jordan x 2 in “Sinners” and just played both parts himself. That might have made for something special.
