“Free Leonard Peltier,” the brand new documentary concerning the imprisoned Indigenous activist, whose life sentence was simply commuted to deal with imprisonment by President Joe Biden days earlier than this movie’s Sundance premiere, is a helpful primer for viewers new to his case. Nevertheless it’s not a lot of a movie, and it’s even unclear what sort of movie its administrators Jesse Brief Bull and David France want it to be.
It is a documentary as a textbook — we’d say it’s like a Wikipedia abstract, besides checking precise Wikipedia is sort of important for making sense of sure occasions introduced in “Free Leonard Peltier” — offering a broad overview with out delving deeper into the humanity of Peltier or why his story issues. It opens within the near-present with Native American activists coming to Washington to plead Peltier’s case, one even saying that overturning Peltier’s conviction has not simply been a trigger all through his whole life however all through the lifetime of his father and grandfather as nicely.
A lot of the remainder of the story is instructed in flashback, so to talk. Nevertheless it’s not Peltier’s story that’s heart stage for a lot of the movie’s first 50 minutes: It’s the story of the complete American Indian Motion (AIM), the grassroots activist group based by Dennis Banks in 1968 to protest the continuing systematic discrimination in opposition to Native Individuals as carried out by the U.S. authorities and the corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs, which had served because the governing physique of their reservations for many years. Poverty, an absence of entry to schooling, and police abuse have been widespread on the reservations at the moment (extra so even than as we speak).
It’s fascinating seeing footage of the nice Russell Means when he was concerned with AIM, years earlier than turning into a film actor. And a number of the highlights of AIM’s work introduced are occasions even these with barely any familiarity with this historical past will acknowledge, similar to AIM’s takeover of Alcatraz island to boost consciousness of their objectives. However for the longest time, Peltier himself is only a bit participant on this story. It’s straightforward to think about a re-edit the place Brief Bull (“Lakota Nation vs. United States”) and France (“The way to Survive a Plague”) set up extra clearly up entrance: Why do Peltier and his case matter? Why did that activist (and his father and grandfather) contemplate Peltier’s case to be a defining trigger in his life? “Free Leonard Peltier” finally comes round to kind of answering these, but it surely’s a great distance about it. This yr’s Oscar nominee for Finest Documentary Function, “Sugarcane,” affords an ideal counterpoint to “Free Leonard Peltier” in its capability to make use of the specifics of a selected case to make bigger factors about Native points.
Did an archive clip of Marlon Brando speaking about his advocacy on behalf of Native Individuals actually should be there? Or a clip of Willie Nelson enjoying a profit live performance on Peltier’s behalf? The temptation to incorporate these speaks to the general construction of the movie: “Free Leonard Peltier” is constructed largely out of archival clips — contemporaneous information studies and long-ago-conducted interviews, particularly. Partially, it’s because lots of the gamers concerned in Peltier’s case are now not with us. Nevertheless it heightens the sensation that the historical past right here is being stored at a little bit of a distance fairly than deeply felt now.
There’s one thing to be stated for this historical past of AIM that dominates the primary half of the movie. It at the very least presents Peltier’s case, which turns into the main focus of the second half, as a part of a collective wrestle, the place his persecution is introduced as consultant of what’s occurred to Native Individuals writ massive. So the truth that the second half of the movie largely follows “true crime documentary” beats represents a little bit of a jarring shift.
In 1975, Peltier and two different Indigenous males, Darryl Butler and Robert Robideau, have been touring in a crimson pickup truck on the Pine Ridge Reservation for the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota after they have been pursued by two FBI brokers in two unmarked automobiles. Photographs have been exchanged — the story instructed by Peltier, Butler, and Robideau was that they thought they have been being fired on by “the goons,” the personal militia of the reservation’s chairman, Richard Wilson, who dominated by way of prison and corrupt techniques. The 2 FBI brokers ended up useless, Butler and Robideau have been caught and Peltier fled to Canada. (What really occurred right here is introduced in such a hazy, unclear manner that supplementary studying is all however required.)
Butler and Robideau have been acquitted for the point-blank execution type murders of the 2 FBI brokers as a result of their protection group went to nice pains to color a portrait of the poverty and corruption of reservation life that AIM was combating in opposition to. That left Peltier to take the autumn. Canada extradited him again to the U.S., and he was convicted of the murders.
That is the place “Free Leonard Peltier” goes full “true crime” as a result of all of a sudden this documentary is about utilizing ballistics research to show that it couldn’t have been Peltier’s personal AR-15 used to kill the brokers. The doc will get so misplaced within the try and clear Peltier that, once more, the bigger factors of the case fall by the wayside: Why is that this case vital? What does the best way that Peltier was railroaded say about justice for Indigenous Individuals total?
“All the things that’s occurred to him is a mirror of what’s occurred to Indian individuals all through historical past,” says one activist close to the top of the movie. That ought to have been on the entrance, with a larger effort to attach the dots all through. “Free Leonard Peltier” is simply too scattered to supply a passable case of its personal.
Grade: C+
“Free Leonard Peltier” world premiered within the Premieres part of the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant.
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