User Reviews

Yes, this is an amateur attempt at film making but it would not so significant if one doesn't look past the dubbing and obvious foibles from the production. I watched this in a Native American Film class and from there I know that this was Arlene Bowman's first attempt at making a real film. She originally set out to show her grandmother's day to day life but came away with something completely different.

They are both Navajo but two people - even related - can't be so different. Arlene doesn't know anything about her grandmother's culture or language. The Navajo have taboos about being filmed in any way. The conflict here is about an essentially "white" Indian trying to make a project for herself (bringing nothing to offer to her grandmother in return) and a "real" Indian sticking to her traditions and her culture.

To put it simply, the film is all about the ethics of documentary film making in the worst way possible. But the message - the significance - is still there.

I had the misfortune of seeing Navajo Talking Picture in a documentary film class, and was apalled at how poorly made this film was. It starts out as a Navajo filmmaker's attempt to document the life of her grandmother, a traditional Navajo, who speaks no English and has maintained her culture, avoiding the ways of white people. But it turns into a wretched mess when the grandmother refuses to cooperate and is unwilling to be on camera. The film then becomes a documentary about Arlene Bowman (the filmmaker and protagonist) attempting to make a documentary about her grandmother. All the dialogue is obviously post-dubbed, out of sync and spoken in emotionless monotone, and the English voice-over translations are all done by the same person with no distinction between different characters. This clumsy audio work leaves the film with a highly phony feel, as if the "actors" are so aware of the camera that they are unable to act naturally, and are therefore subconciously performing for the camera. Bowman faces a number of problems throughout the film, and goes about solving them in long, boring scenes that seem to have been written in in order to move the story forward. In the final climactic scene, the grandmother agrees to be photographed, and "our hero" gets to make her film.

It all feels scripted, but the only reason that I feel that it must be real is that nobody in their right mind would go through all the trouble to stage such a boring, pointless, awful excuse for a story.

If you ever run across this film in a video store, spare others the boredom of sitting through it by placing the tape behind a row of videos where it will never be found.