The Indian doesn't match the story or dialog
Why did they use terms like 'squaw' and 'wigwam' which clearly referred to American Indians, yet portray him as an Indian-Indian?
shareWhy did they use terms like 'squaw' and 'wigwam' which clearly referred to American Indians, yet portray him as an Indian-Indian?
shareWhen Roy tells the story he has in mind an American Indian. But the story is shown as Alexandra envisions it, and she thinks that Roy is referring to someone from India.
shareexactly
shareYep. I loved that part, but I was hoping it had more of that device. I didn't notice any other instances of her "seeing" something not exactly as he meant.
shareBecause the story is a meld of what Roy says and what Alexandria imagines. If you look closely, she populates Roy's story with people from her life. So the slave is the ice truck man who lets her lick the ice when he delivers it. Darwin is one of the hospital orderlies. The actor who sits outside when the agent visits Roy (and is clearly the man Roy's ex is now seeing) becomes General Odious. Odious' guards' uniforms are based on the protective gear the doctors wear in the x ray room. The mystic is one of the men who works in the orange farm with her family. As is an Indian man, as in a man from India.
So Roy is talking about wigwams and squaws because he's thinking of the plot of the moving picture (originally) that he was a stunt man for (if you watch the movie at the end, and think about how the story started, it's pretty obvious. It got more complex as he weaved the need to get morphine into it). He means Native Americans, but Alexandria doesn't know any native Americans. But she does know an Indian, who is slotted into her perception of the story.
It's such a beautiful movie that threads all of this together.
The mystic was based on the old man with the false teeth. Although they didn't look the same at all and in the imagined version to mystic was strong and fierce, although the old man was kind and weak.
shareThat's one of the amazing things about this film -- what one character says doesn't always mean the same thing to another character. Roy meant Indian as in Native American; Alexandria understood Indian as from India.
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