Despite its unique setting, Songs My Brothers Taught Me is pretty ordinary
For better and worse, the adjective that best describes Songs My Brothers Taught Me is “unemphatic.” The film premiered in the Dramatic Competition at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won no awards and was generally politely ignored—not because people didn’t like it, but because it lacked any sort of “hook” that would get them talking or excited. In theory, its setting—the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota—should have served that function. But unlike some previous Sundance movies about Native Americans (most notably 1998’s aggressively self-deprecating Smoke Signals), Songs My Brothers Taught Me doesn’t make cultural identity its primary focus… perhaps because its writer-director, Chloé Zhao, was born in Beijing. Instead, it’s a wispy but charming story of two slightly adrift kids who just happen to live on a reservation, and willingly runs the risk of seeming a bit ordinary. Viewers will be torn between admiring its laid-back naturalism and wishing it possessed just a little more oomph.
