By Brooke King, Staff Writer
“Everything is a struggle. Nothing is easy. We just have to keep going.” With these words of advice that echo through the film and into the hearts of the audience, The Dome of Heaven brings new bearing to the societal perception of Native American culture and family relations. Though the film originally started out as one of author Diane Glancy’s novels, Flutie, over the years Glancy could not ignore from the stacks of papers that lined her table at home. When Glancy’s Aunt Martha died and left her a sum of money, she decided to take the money and create Flutie into a film. The film begins with Florence “Flutie” Moses(Thirza Defoe), a teenage Cherokee girl in her senior year of high school, who has trouble speaking up and letting her voice be heard. As a child, Flutie had fallen on a cistern and cut her cheek and mouth open. Her mother and the doctor held her down and sewed her mouth shut, crippling her ability to speak her mind. The film chronicles Flutie’s coming of age story. With a Cherokee father(Wes Studi) and a German mother, who met Flutie’s father while he was stationed in Germany, Flutie is constantly being undermined by their strong influence. Franklin Moses(Noah Watts), Flutie’s brother, is the black sheep of the family. Constantly at odds with his father and causing trouble, Franklin is lost in his way and criticizes Flutie at every turn because of her dream to go to Southwestern Oklahoma Sates University to study geology. Stuck between what she wants and what she is being pressured to do, Flutie must find her voice and speak up or she will end up marrying Jess Tessman (Mark Randall) or Spoons (Doug Bauer) and never leave Vici, Oklahoma. Flutie is convinced that she is just like the Greek myth of Philomela, who weaves her story from silence, and tells the myth to her best friend Swallow(Molly Randall), who supports Flutie in her effort to find her voice and the strength the speak her mind. Flutie and Swallow are both stuck in a broken fairytale, where neither one will come out unscathed. While Franklin struggles to find his way, Swallow deals with rejection, and Jess and Spoons follow Flutie at every turn hoping that she will pick one or the other. Flutie is naively stuck in the middle with her eyes closed trying to listen to the ocean. Troubled family relations make tension worse and Flutie ultimately must decide which path she will take: the one that leads away from Vici or the one that leads down the road to the trailer park. The first full length film for Glancy, a 89 minute literary masterpiece, comes to life in the actors and the story that builds from the opening scene. While the film was only shot in two weeks and an ultra low budget production, which was estimated to have cost only $200,000 to make, it is brilliant for an independent film. Though there are scenes that are crudely shot and the camera trembles from the unsteady hold of the cameraman, the scenes of acting and suburb script engross the audience fully that the slight hiccups of the film are quite unnoticeable. There are some scenes that leaves the audience questioning where the character of Geneva fits in with the plot, but all questions are revealed with an ending that will both shock and enlighten the audience with a contemporary take about the struggle for stability in a dysfunctional family.
