How do you make a nonfiction film when you must broach a deeply painful, buried topic? That tension is central to Sugarcane, a film about the Canadian Indian residential school system. For decades, the Canadian government would pull indigenous children from their homes and put them in boarding schools – mostly run by the Catholic church – which led to horrific trauma that these people and their ancestors have felt for generations. Directors Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie make their film into a feature-length pursuit of the truth, and so it unfolds with patience because the film’s subjects have buried theses experience into deep into their memory. This approach demonstrates unusual empathy and tact, and yet the unhurried style – along with its lack of a strong narrative arc – means the filmmakers effectively rely on the pure horror of their premise, anyway.
NoiseCat is one of the film’s co-directors, and also appears on screen for long stretches of the film. Together with his father, they embark on a road trip through Canada, where they hope to find the secret of their collective past. The directors do capture the pure beauty of the wild Canadian mountainside, and how it serves as a contrast to the modest buildings where they currently dwell. There are several other narrative threads, including a retired chief who goes on a trip to Vatican City to have an audience with The Pope, who may or may not apologize to the community for the entire residential school system, while another, more current chief uses his political connections to seek more recognition from the Canadian government (Justin Trudeau makes a cameo in this film). All these official channels help raise awareness and acknowledgment of what happened, and yet the real work of the film is in quieter movements, where people like Julian’s father find the courage to talk about their past.
Sugarcane is a powerful set of contrasts. There are still hints that the community has found ways to thrive, including regular ceremonies, rodeos, and other smaller events. NoiseCat and Kassie film all this lovingly, with the subtext that the characters are not exactly in denial. They simply refuse to let their trauma define them, and yet the film argues any true growth requires the community’s elders to do the hard, courageous work of discussing their childhoods. Like another great documentary about buried trauma The Act of Killing, Sugarcane builds toward tough scenes where characters have tough “breakthroughs.” There are no recreations, which would probably be too awful for anyone to watch, and so the fractured storytelling has to be enough. Our imaginations are powerful enough, anyway, so when one person discusses the cycle of abuse – that priests raped indigenous girls and literally discarded the unwanted children – we do not need any further embellishment.
Although this documentary is an act of courage and although the people in it have dealt with absolute horrors, Sugarcane only has intermittent scenes of power. There is a persistent unfocused quality, with the filmmakers believing that big emotional scenes are synonymous with quality. That can be true, but only up to a certain point. Unfocused and sometimes meandering, this film is padded out, a short-form documentary that was extended so it could be more viable to theatrical markets. That may sound unfair or uncouth, since we are talking about survivors of institutional abuse, and yet the opposite is more accurate: Sugarcane counts on the disturbing nature of its premise to smooth over its shortcomings as a piece of nonfiction cinematic art. The implication of this narrative gambit means, despite all those great intentions, there is a gnawing sense that NoiseCat and Kassie nearly failed the survivors not as advocates, but as filmmakers.
Photo courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films
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