Want to hear more from the actors and creators of your favorite shows and films? Subscribe to The Cinema Spot on YouTube for all of our upcoming interviews!
Beans premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). It had a limited theatrical release in November of 2021, and it is now streaming on Hulu as of February 8th.
Rarely does a movie remind me of my own subjectivity, and how caught up we can become in our own little bubbles. Beans takes place during the Oka Crisis of 1990, in which a First Nations group, specifically Mohawk people, were forced into a violent dispute by the Canadian government in Quebec.
Being from the United States of America, I didn’t know any of this history. Though the mistreatment of native peoples just 30 years ago does not come as a shock, it remains alarming throughout the film.
The conflict serves as the background for a coming of age story, but also as a character itself. Tekehentahkhwa, a young girl who goes by the nickname “Beans” walks a tightrope as she navigates her life and the life of her community. Despite the specific hisotrical moment the story takes place in, and the uniquely Mohawk experience Beans has, there is a universality to the story that allows viewers to connect to Beans, and by extension empathize with the Mohawk people during the Oka Crisis.
Beans lives with her pregnant mother, her father, and her sister. She has a tight knit family, but like many teenagers, she finds a group of “undesirable” kids to start hanging out with. She is prodded by her friends for being a baby, and she is taught quickly that being aggressive makes you seem more mature.
The movie hints at the idea that aggression serves as a mask to the sadness and fear that comes from being a kid living through that tumultuous time just outside Oka Quebec. Paulina Alexis’s character, April, tells Beans at one point that “if you can’t feel pain, no one can hurt you.” A sad truth she’d been forced to internalize.
Beans, her friends, her family, and her community could just give up and give in to the oppression placed on them. But they don’t. And neither does she.
Like most coming of age stories, Beans is largely about identity. The malleable identity of a young teenager is difficult enough to capture, let alone live out, but director Tracey Deer somehow manages to balance it with the difficulty of being in a marginalized community, actively being threatened by their white neighbors.
Beans’s struggle with identity is largely a product of external forces around her. The pressure to conform to parents or friends’ wishes, truly anyone around you is a battle that everyone faces. Watching it unfold for a First Nations child is a narrative that I haven’t really had access to seeing until now. I’m glad I did.
Director Tracy Deer does not disappoint in this debut feature. The heart and emotional depth that she managed to capture leaves me excited for her future projects.
Beans is streaming now on Hulu, if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favor.
.
11 Comments on “Beans Non-Spoiler Review”