This past weekend I took in Bones of Crows which is a movie dealing with residential schools in Canada. The movie which debuted at TIFF back in September but was only recently released commercially earlier this month but just began playing for a week at my local theatre in Peace River.
The movies premise is a psychological drama told through the eyes of Cree Matriarch, Aline Spears, as she survives Canada’s residential school system to continue her family’s generational fight in the face of systemic starvation, racism and sexual abuse. Bones of Crows unfolds over one hundred years with a cumulative force that propels us into the future.
Bones of Crows has a lot of strengths to it especially in terms of its acting. The movies main actress is Grace Dove who is the main actress portraying Aline Spears, with Carla-Rae and Summer Testawich portraying the older and younger versions of the character. The pacing of the movie is good especially as it navigates decades ranging from 1930s to 2009. The strength relies in the story telling it tells that story of the effects physically and more importantly mentally on those who were survivors of the residential schools. The movie definitely made monsters out of everyone involved with the schools, even the one caring person turns out to be a monster. It was a movie that wasn’t scared to touch the subject matter it was covering whether it was the mental, physical or sexual abuse that took place. I like that it followed on showing the effects it had on different characters and ultimately led to their demise, even if we don’t see what happened to them much like Adam Whallach, her husband who only shows a couple small glimpses, one of him getting sent to the school and the other being seeing what happened to the boy he first met. The symbolism of the crows is greatly done in the film, which was very noticeable by the end even if you missed it throughout the movie.
The few issues come in some forms of dialogue, more so towards the end of the film, notably an interaction between Aline and Sister Ruth and the other being Archbishop Thomas Miller and his conversation with the older Taylor Whallach. The dialogue at those moments aren’t natural conversation, almost like bad ad speak. It was noticeable somethings that were “shoehorned” in, like you knew it would be brought up but it wasn’t the time for it in the story or I feel realistic to the time period it was portraying. With the time jumps came a lot of time jumping around, which I feel could’ve been handled better as it jumped too much and at times no reason for the jump.
The movie is seeing a five-part psychological drama called Bone of Crows: The Series to come in 2023-24 over on CBC, this might be why we are left with questions and why certain things were not gone into detail as they might have been otherwise. The show is supposed to dive more into the story of Aline, so I am not sure if we will as much time jumping or not as it has several decades to cover mainly in the 30s-60s based on the movie. The series will also have some notable names join like Graham Greene and Lorne Cardinal. I am a little worried how for television the show will handle the subject matter compared to streaming or an HBO type outlet.
Overall I feel this was a great movie and some of the negatives were nitpicky but definitely worth a watch if you can see it. It has only started seeing commercial releases, especially as it is around National Indigenous Peoples Day in Canada, that just happened. The subject matter might not be the best for little ones to watch and does come with a 14A rating. The movie has seen many positive reviews currently a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 7.2/10 on IMDB.
Final Grade: 8/10
Check out the Trailer Below:
– Everett
