best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I'm probably not in the right demographic for this movie. Although I am gay, I am not an American Indian, and this movie depends heavily on an appreciation of their culture, their history and (if this movie is at all authentic) their overwhelming love of melodrama.Not a single word in the very stilted and contrived screenplay sounded to me like an actual human being talking, but like a person reading a proclamation about something very profound. The many poetry readings, funeral speeches, etc - even ordinary conversations between lovers and friends - sound so forced and pretentious that they're nearly unbearable. That's probably because the movie was written by a poet about himself. When the same poet also directs the movie, the combination practically guarantees a mediocre result.Very, very few successful movies are written and directed by people whose subject is their own lives and whose primary interest is in poetry rather than in movie-making. In fact, I can't think of a single one.If Sherman Alexie had allowed someone else to write and direct his story, it might have worked very well, because it's not an uninteresting story - but this movie doesn't work at all, not for me. It's too unnatural, and Native Americans ought to be MORE natural than the rest of us, not less.If you have a soft spot for overblown melodrama, stilted dialog, declamatory acting and/or Native Americans, then The Business of Fancydancing may be just right for you. But if you're looking for a good movie, keep looking.

The Business of Fancy Dancing raises questions about native culture, both how it is viewed by natives and how it is viewed by others. Seymour, who longs to leave the reservation days behind him, cannot escape the reservation in his poetry. Mainstream America, it seems, is not interested in another poet who happens to be Indian, they want a real Indian poet. And thus the cultural struggle within Seymour is the defining theme of the film. Seymour views himself as better than the reservation. "Most smart Indians move away from the reservation," Seymour declares at one point. Using mainly literature, the film asks the question: What is an Indian? For many whites, the film suggests, an Indian is defined by blood. "In a great Native American novel . . . all of the white people will be Indian and all of the Indians will be ghosts," Seymour tells the audience at the beginning. Throughout the film, Indian history and culture is a common topic, often discussed in the form of a poem or a story. Seymour tells a story where he is giving blood. He tells the nurse he is Crazy Horse. He is told that the United States has taken too much of his blood already, he must wait one or two generations to donate again. The film suggests that an Indian is defined by the land. Thus, an Indian who leaves the reservation, like Seymour, abandons his identity. Yet, Seymour cannot escape his past. Nearly all of his poems are inspired by events on the reservation, usually events as they were experienced by others. The film uses Seymour's identity struggle to also suggest that once an Indian does physically leave his land, he will be unable to leave it in his mind.Seymour constantly profits from telling tales of reservation life – often passing off the experiences of others as his own. Those who remained on the reservation are resentful of Seymour. And he, in turn, is resentful of them. The film uses this tension between the characters to raise the issue of Indian identity, but it does not truly offer an answer to the question. Perhaps there is no answer. Seymour declares at one point that "The world is a prison; with wards . . . the reservation is just the worst of them." Is the reservation a prison? For Seymour it is. For him, it is the one place to which all things return. For the other Indians in the film, it is home – it is where they feel they belong.Everything culminates at the end of the film when two versions of Seymour appear at Mouse's funeral. One leaves the reservation; the other remains. No matter where Seymour goes, it seems, a part of his being will always remain on the reservation. Thus, it is his prison. But, perhaps, a greater statement is being made. For many native tribes, attachment to land is what defines them. Try as he may to leave the reservation, Seymour is forever a part of the land he once belonged to – forever connected to his people. Through his literature it becomes clear that, for Seymour, all things begin with – and return to – the land which raised him.

Sherman Alexie is simply an amazing writer. His poems are amazing, his movies are amazing... and yet I'm a white guy. How do I know how true they are to The Rez? Besides, how do Native Americans feel about his portrayal of them? After all, that's a very difficult matter to contend with. Some of the few Native Americans filmmakers that deal with this issue are often forced to purposefully make their movies self-conscious (including cameras in them, etc.) just to show that they recognize that their portrayal is still through a popular, Anglo ethnocentric medium. Besides that, Native Americans aren't just one group, one ethnicity... each tribe is a nation, and they all have separate constructions of their identity. One Indian nation may be represented well in a film, and it confuses the white viewer as to how Indians "really are" because other nations "aren't like that." Thus, this film. Sherman Alexie has bound to have suffered criticism for making Indians portray-able to white folk, and this movie shows a Native American writer who has forsaken his tribe in order to write all about it, keeping in mind that the pop culture needs a tragic Indian, one that's half-white in order to relate to the white community, one that's attracted to white people as well. The entire film is a series of mirrors reflecting it's own problem of identity, which most of the time becomes really tedious but this time is actually really well done.One of the ways he succeeds is in admitting the simple truth: writers are frauds. Their writing stems from real pain, but in the end they are all just pathological liars. They make up stories either to make themselves seem more interesting, or to pretend their pain is okay.And the pop culture eats it up while the ones that feel that pain are ignored.--PolarisDiB

I was impressed with "The Business of Fancydancing. " I thought it was very well made, with beautiful cinematography, excellent development of several believable key characters and a sensitive treatment of a tragic but important personal story with profound socal implications. The movie was complemented with a wonderful soundtrack and the juxtaposition of conflicting styles of music that helped to tell this paradoxical story. The ending was particularly poignant and extremely well done. Certain plot subtleties and finely nuanced multi-layered scences were evident during my second viewing. It offered moments of exquisite irony and heartfelt soul-searching. It was an intelligent treatment of the interaction of several layers of delicate personal issues. I was deeply moved by this film.