The snow crunches beneath her feet as Tana (Lily Gladstone) steps into her car. She pauses as she glances at the handicapped tag hanging on the rearview mirror before quietly removing it. A voice on the radio details the perilous weather conditions, but as night turns to day and the snow becomes blindingly white, Tana is undeterred. She’s driving from Minneapolis to Spearfish, South Dakota in answer to an invitation to her cousin Lainey’s wedding (the details of which are conveyed via voicemail voiceover). A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, she’ll be reconnecting with her Native family for the first time in a while, in addition to venturing out for the first time since the passing of her grandmother, who she cared for. This set-up is sparse, yet relates everything the viewer needs to know to understand the impetus for Tana’s journey, and that tone continues throughout Morissa Maltz’s debut feature The Unknown Country, whose combination of documentary-style footage of real people with actors portraying fictional characters reads more like snippets of memory as it pays tribute to the connections we make with others as we move through the world.
Tana’s roadtrip ends up taking her much farther than Spearfish, however. When she happens upon a photo of her grandmother as a much younger woman, taken among some rock formations somewhere in Texas, Tana chooses to drive there to retrace her footsteps. Maltz drew on her personal road trips back and forth across the same area and her similar (if, as she has stated herself, anti-climatic recreation of a photograph of her own grandmother) in crafting the bones of Tana’s journey, but that’s not where her personal associations with the story end. She got the people she met and friends she made in the course of her travels involved in the film to varying degrees, from Lainey Bearkiller (who serves as a producer in addition to playing Tana’s cousin; that’s her real wedding we see in the film) to Pam, the welcoming waitress who worked at the same Midwest diner for years. That molding the story and the characters was a collaborative process between those in front of and behind the camera, not driven solely by Maltz, is clear, and the film is all the better for it, especially in its warm portrayal of Native families during the scenes where Tana is spending time with Lainey, her fiancé, and their daughter. Gladstone fits in like a glove in every scene, whether she is interacting with non-actors or the few other performers in the film (Raymond Lee plays a man she spends a diverting evening with late in the movie). She’s understated yet riveting, whether she is playing pensive and grieving or joyful.
And it seems like such a simple, obvious thing, but the fact that The Unknown Country was shot on location is key. Maltz and her team (which also includes producer and editor Vanara Taing and cinematographer Andrew Hajek) revel in the tight-knit pleasures of small, rural communities, and every environment Tana enters feels that much more tangible as a result. And because these are real locations and Gladstone is such a chameleon (unlike the similarly-crafted Nomadland, a solid movie in which Frances McDormand is too obviously Academy Award-winning Frances McDormand), the brief tangents in which the real people Tana encounters on her journey are allowed to tell their stories, almost interview-style, fit in seamlessly. The spirit of indie filmmaking is captured at its finest. And it’s because of all that that, when Tana does finally reach the end of her journey, the realization of the tribute to her grandmother does feel so poignant.
The Unknown Country is currently available to rent and buy on demand, and will be available on DVD and Blu-ray from Music Box Films on November 21. The Blu-ray contains a wealth of special features that enhance readings of the film, from in-depth discussions at film festivals that allow Maltz and her crew to go deep into their inspirations for the project, behind-the-scenes photos, a short film by Maltz, and a feature-length audio commentary with Maltz, Gladstone, and Taing that provides further insights while also confirming just how close and fun this team is together.
The Unknown Country is not rated. Runtime: 85 minutes.
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