Heritage

This past Tuesday I saw Heritage, a film by Cate Giordano, at the Brattle Theater's series Spectral Evidence.  This was a very strange movie and while I felt that certain themes were being explored, I'm not really sure what the movie as a whole was trying to portray.

There was certainly an element of religion, especially cults.  The blue faced tribe felt extremist from the beginning of the film, and was seen through a negative, critical lens.  At times the ridiculousness of this group felt humorous, while at other moments the cult struck me as terrifying in their commitment to such archaic beliefs.  There was also a second religious thread in the film: the search for the white buffalo.  While the religion associated with the white buffalo felt more grounded, it too demonstrated a form of obsession and irrationality.  Overall, I believe the film was critiquing religious practices.

Another interesting element of this film was the idea of multiple personalities, or how an individual can change into another person.  Cate, acting in her own film, portrayed three different characters in the movie:  Beau, Ruby, and the preacher.  Seeing the same actor take on three different roles made me question the relationships between the characters.  Especially after we discover that Ruby (played by Cate) is a figment of Beau's imagination, I began to wonder if all three characters were on some level the same person.

Heritage was certainly a bizarre film but while many aspects of it confused me, the movie also made me laugh multiple times.  There is a strange, inexplicable humor to the film, from the actors' stylized "bad" performances, to images of humans pretending to be buffalo.  When I stopped trying to understand the film and let myself enjoy the craziness, I found parts of Heritage to be quite entertaining.