The Exiles

THE RESTORATION AND REDISCOVERY OF THE YEAR!

NEW, BEAUTIFULLY RESTORED 35mm PRINT  │  An astonishing nocturnal ode to the Native American diaspora and a now-vanished Los Angeles neighbourhood (Bunker Hill), Kent Mackenzie’s The Exiles is one of year’s most highly praised films — no small feat for an obscure, unreleased low-budget feature made half a century ago by a now-forgotten filmmaker who died in 1980. Excerpts from The Exiles appeared in Thom Andersen’s 2003 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself, and helped revive interest; restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and Milestone Films, The Exiles was re-launched at the 2008 Berlin Film Festival, and has been winning rapturous reviews ever since. “Mackenzie’s miraculous independent film [was] made between 1958 and 1961 with scrounged film, borrowed equipment, donated services, and free labour . . . Mackenzie, while a USC film student, befriended Native Americans who had left their reservations and towns for Los Angeles, and he persuaded them to re-enact scenes from their own lives for the camera. The resulting drama, a Pilgrim’s Progress of three characters through a night of urban loneliness and dissipation, has an epic grandeur and a monumental intimacy that belies its mere 72 minutes. Yvonne, who is pregnant and dreams of a better life for her child, drains away the hours watching B-Westerns in an all-night grind house while her layabout boyfriend, Homer, goes out to drink and gamble. Tommy, a smooth operator, hangs out in bars and tries to pick up women but likens his life to ‘doing time on the outside.’ Mackenzie films the minutely incremental action (or, more often, inaction) in strikingly textured and composed images (the night photography alone would make the film immortal), balancing them with the character’s revealing, poignant voice-over monologues. Few directors in the history of cinema have so skilfully and deeply joined a sense of place with the subtle flux of inner life” (Richard Brody, The New Yorker). “It’s worth adding that the terrific original garage-rock score is by an L.A. band called the Revels, whose song ‘Comanche’ appears both here and in Pulp Fiction” (Andrew O’Hehir, Salon). B&W, 35mm. 72 mins.