The Dark Wind

Having read the book of the same title by Tony Hillerman, I believe the movie is one of the best in being as close to the book as possible. The story is great but film-making was terrible. There is at least one shot in the movie where the boom mike is clearly visible at the top of the screen. Also, the acting from most of the people wasn't that great. As far as Lou Diamond Phillips goes, I have seen him do much better than this film, and I think the best actor was Gary Farmer in the role of Cowboy Dashee. However, if you're a fan of the books, I recommend seeing this and I hope that the upcoming Hillerman stories on PBS are better than this one.

For me, the biggest shame of this movie is that the horribly botched direction gets in the way of what I consider an excellent performance by Lou Diamond Phillips in the title role. Whether his performance was exactly what fans of the book expected Jim Chee to be like or not (I read the book first, and personally thought Lou did quite a nice interpretation of Chee), the fact remains that the performance was a high quality example of subtle film acting.

And for those who quibble that Lou shouldn't have played the role because he wasn't a full blood Navajo...well, I'd like to know who the hell Russell Crowe thinks he is! For an Australian to be allowed to play an American in A BEAUTIFUL MIND and an Italian in GLADIATOR...It's just not right!

I like "The Dark Wind." Though it didn't follow the novel to the last detail, it did follow it much more than the subsequent "Mystery" TV movies did. And this one definitely has the flavor of the Hillerman novels. It's not a blockbuster. In fact THIS probably should have been a TV movie as well. While they cherry-picked some details from other novels, the details of Navajo life and behavior that Hillerman describes in his novels are there. Some people didn't like that Leaphorn was inserted in the story though he wasn't in the original novel. I didn't mind that at all--they were intending to make more of these and the most popular stories have both characters. And the handling of Leaphorn is SO MUCH better here than in those Mystery TV-movies (in which they made Leaphorn Chee's "City Guy" foil.)

There is one thing I want to clear up though--the "boom mic mistakes: so many folks mention. The boom mic that intrudes in to several shots in the home video version (which is the only version we have, unfortunately)is NOT A MISTAKE BY THE DIRECTOR OR THE CINEMATOGRAPHER. It is an error in the transfer of the film to the home video format.

Many 1.85:1 widescreen films shot in the 80s and 90s were really shot at 1.33:1, non-anamorphic. The "widescreen" effect was then achieved by masking off the top and bottom of the image. Sometimes the studios did this on the print itself, but sometimes they would leave it to the projectionist in the theater--if he/she projected it so that each side reached the edge of the screen and centered the imaged vertically, the "masking" was achieved simply because the top and bottom of the image was bleeding off the screen. I know that was done because back in the day I saw several films where the projectionist did not center the image vertically and all kinds of stuff the audience was never meant to see would be visible--boom mics, lights, rigging, and etc. I have specific memories of seeing this in "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie" and Richard Pryor's "Busting Loose." So, if the folks who released "The Dark Wind" to home video back in the day had given a crap, they'd have either 1) masked the film to 1.85:1 or cropped it in on ALL sides for a proper old-type TV 1.33:1 ratio.

Anyway, if you have a widescreen TV (and wide is the norm now) all you have to do is blow up the image so that the right and left sides of the image go all the way to the edge and the tops and bottoms get cut off(on my Samsung it's the "Zoom 1" setting). THEN you'll see the image as it was meant to be framed, with no boom mics in sight. AND, I might add, the landscapes and other scenes will look much more impressive as well, as it emphasizes the wide horizons.

Plenty of films of this vintage suffer from boom mikes in frame and the top and dolly tracks visible at the bottom: this is an artifact born of failed productions. When the camera operator composed the shot, he had been told the film was being made for theatrical release, in a 1:1.85 ratio and so when the boom dipped down slightly, but not enough to make it into the "letterbox" they let it slide. Then, after the film failed on the festival circuit or preview process, etc and was dumped to video no one cared to correct the errors - they were all just trying to dump the project on the market as quickly as possible. Had the final "release print" been made, instead of a video transfer from the camera original (mivees and all) we would have been spared the spectacle of seeing mister boom mike. Most of these types of film were being dumped onto the video market before consumers cared to see letterboxed releases, so the transfer was made full frame.

Having grown up in Northern Arizona and living next to the Navajo Reservation, I was very excited when Hillerman's book became a movie; until I saw it. Navajo friends told me that Lou Diamond Phillips actually spoke pretty good Navajo in the film. It's too bad those in charge of production didn't care enough to make the quality film this story should have been. When you see microphones dangling during key scenes (or any scene for that matter) you know somebody didn't give a rip about this project.