‘Beans’ Review: Growing Up Fast in the ’90s - The New York Times

A middle school student comes of age during a standoff between the police and Mohawk residents during the 1990 Oka crisis in Canada.

The drama “Beans” sets its coming-of-age story during the 1990 Oka crisis, when Mohawk residents of Oka, Quebec, began protesting the expansion of a golf course into Native burial ground. The characters in the story are fictional, but “Beans” takes place during a real period of turbulence in Eastern Canada, as Mohawk people were harassed by their neighbors and the police.

The film’s heroine, Tekehentahkhwa (Kiawentiio), is a Mohawk middle schooler with a bright smile and braids. Her family calls her Beans. She’s still learning about the world when her hometown suddenly becomes the site of a major conflict. Gunshots ring out in the forest where she plays. People throw rocks at her mother’s car. Beans seeks out guidance from an older girl, April (Paulina Alexis), but no matter how much April pretends to be in control, she and Beans are still children. And this crisis has rattled even their elders, even Beans’s dauntless mother, Lily (Rainbow Dickerson).

This is the first fictional film directed by the documentarian Tracey Deer, and she brings a good eye for which characters might make a compelling story. Deer emphasizes the styles of the period — the high ponytails and neon windbreakers opposite police uniforms. But her heroes aren’t fighters; they are the children and mothers who must navigate empty grocery shelves and taunting mobs.

In choosing her protagonists as she has, Deer has made a canny portrait of Mohawk domestic life during a modern conflict. The difference between this and other homefront movies is that usually war is depicted as happening far away. Here, Beans has to make sense of a fight where her home is the battlefield, too.

Beans
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. In theaters and available to rent or buy on Apple TV, Vudu and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.

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‘Beans’ Review: Growing Up Fast in the ’90s - The New York Times
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