Silent Tongue is one strange western, a bit too strange I think for many. It concerns a pair of Irish emigres to the west. Horse trader Richard Harris and his
son River Phoenix and Alan Bates and his son Dermot Mulroney. Bates also has
two daughters from a Kiowa woman, Sheila Tousey and Tantoo Cardinal and
Bates is a medicine show proprietor.
A year back Harris purchased Cardinal as a bride for Phoenix for some horses he broke Among Kiowas that is SOP but as this is a racial thing we're supposed to be outraged. Anyway Cardinal has died in childbirth and Phoenix has gone bonkers refusing to bury her or burn her on a pyre in the Kiowa custom.
Harris purchases Tousey now in the hope she can snap River back to reality. But Mulroney who has a more than brotherly interest in his half sisters sets out after Harris with Bates in tow. And Cardinal now a spirit is busy wreaking havoc on all because she can't pass over.
It all gets kind of weird, not exactly traditional western fare. Best in the film is Bates who has a great part as a thoroughly dissolute character in the west. This was River Phoenix's last released film, I wish his swan song had been My Own Private Idaho.
Definitely not for everyone's tastes.
A year back Harris purchased Cardinal as a bride for Phoenix for some horses he broke Among Kiowas that is SOP but as this is a racial thing we're supposed to be outraged. Anyway Cardinal has died in childbirth and Phoenix has gone bonkers refusing to bury her or burn her on a pyre in the Kiowa custom.
Harris purchases Tousey now in the hope she can snap River back to reality. But Mulroney who has a more than brotherly interest in his half sisters sets out after Harris with Bates in tow. And Cardinal now a spirit is busy wreaking havoc on all because she can't pass over.
It all gets kind of weird, not exactly traditional western fare. Best in the film is Bates who has a great part as a thoroughly dissolute character in the west. This was River Phoenix's last released film, I wish his swan song had been My Own Private Idaho.
Definitely not for everyone's tastes.