THE SONG OF HIAWATHA (1997)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

From the inception of SONG OF HIAWATHA, the film takes the viewpoint of a group of white traders (including a Christian priest) who are traveling in the Great Lakes region to trade with the tribes. For most of the film this group is told of the great marvels of Hiawatha, but up until the ending the narrative suggests that the real Hiawatha is long gone and that these are only stories. Then, at the last moment, there is an ambivalent suggestion that Hiawatha still exists in some supernatural form. Thanks to this last-minute flourish, SONG is disqualified from being simply a story in which marvels are related in story-form. Because there is a suggestion of some marvelous presence-- even though it is left ambiguous-- SONG becomes more properly a instance of the "phantasmal figuration" trope.


The sole merit of SONG OF HIAWATHA is that it is a movie of a *faux* Native American epic that actually stars a lot of Native American actors, including Graham Greene and Irene Bedard. Unfortunately, though the film retells most of the highlights of the Longfellow poem, the script is dull and the direction-- the only IMDB credit for one Jeffrey Shore-- is entirely pedestrian.