The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw

An Indigenous woman reluctantly returns to her isolated reserve to help her father care for her bitter mother.

The title The Incredible 25th Year of Mitzi Bearclaw doesn’t lie. The twenty-fifth year of the titular Mitzi is indeed hard to believe, especially considering that the actress who plays her was closer to 30. But Mitzi wouldn't be a believable twenty-five-year-old even if she was the right age. Here is a young woman who makes hats – quite possibly the old fashioned way; i.e., using the mercuric nitrate that gave rise to the expression “mad as a hatter.” Mitzi tells her boyfriend Ringo Leaves-No-Shadow that she plans to make “life-saving hats,” and later expresses her desire to go to “hat school.” Really. Those are her words. Nobody has the heart to tell her there is no such “school” anywhere, or that “life-saving hats” already exist and are called helmets. Mitzi must put her (pipe) dreams on hold when her father writes to ask her to return to her reservation, which she calls “the island of old fools.” This is not a very nice way of referring to an indigenous reservation, which is perhaps why, in order not to offend anyone in particular, we never find out exactly to which tribe Mitzi belongs. Actually, we never really learn much about Native Americans in this movie. If we're to believe director/co-writer Shelley Niro, the whole experience comes down to arts and crafts – you better believe there's no shortage of dreamcatchers here – and having visions (or, presumably, hallucinations triggered by the aforementioned mercuric nitrate) in which other Native Americans engage in Star Trek cosplay, among other intellectual properties. When Mitzi finally arrives at the reservation (the movie starts in “October” and she arrives in “November”, but we never have any idea what day it is), we see it’s actually called “Owl Island”, population: 308 – although Mitzi's parents seem to be the only permanent residents. Once there, Mitzi completely forgets about Ringo and has eyes only for Honeyboy Yellowdog, and right about this point I stopped taking this movie seriously, what with all those ridiculous names (and I’m not saying American Indians have ridiculous names, but I do wonder how many Native Americans have names like Honeyboy Yellowdog) constantly reminding me of Fred Ward’s joke in Silkwood – which is no more offensive than anything in The Incredible 25th Year etc. and is part of a much better film.