For the very first time, I find myself writing about a movie with a protagonist that shares my old French name:Aline {my mum preferred an unusual spelling). Canadian filmmaker Marie Clements’ newest film, a drama titled Bones of Crows, tells the story of a residential school survivor named Aline Spears—and it’s not your typical theatre fare. Moreover, parts of it were shot on Vancouver Island, including in Esquimalt, Victoria and Saanich.

When I saw Bones of Crows in Victoria at the beginning of June, many audience members remained in their seats after the end credits finished rolling to discuss Clements’ film. As the woman in front of me stood up to leave, she wiped away tears. I imagine her reaction had as much to do with the saddening end captions and clips of real testimonies from residential school survivors following the movie as it did with the heartbreaking film itself.

Bones of Crows is a feature film inspired by true events. There is a trigger warning at the beginning, relating to the sensitive subject matter. Though many scenes can be upsetting, including the ones depicting rapes and suicide, Clements treats these depictions deftly. It is a story of resilience, beautifully filmed, and one of the most significant films I have seen lately.

The woman behind the screenplay is 61-year-old writer-director Marie Clements, who also wrote and directed Red Snow (2019). She is Métis-Dene and from Vancouver.

Bones of Crows, told through the eyes of Cree matriarch Aline Spears, is the story of the struggle for survival of a musical prodigy (Spears) and her siblings in a residential school after the children are taken from their family home in Manitoba. It unfolds over a century, portraying several generations of Spears’ family as they battle systemic racism, starvation and sexual abuse and seek justice. Three actresses play Spears as she grows from child to matriarch: Grace Dove, from British Columbia, Summer Testawich and Carla Rae.

The story jumps back and forth in time, beginning at Turtle Crossing, Manitoba, in the 1800s and taking us to the Vatican in 2009 where a delegation of residential school survivors, including 86-year-old Spears, has an audience with the Pope. Among the points depicted along the way are a Manitoba residential school in the 1930s, Montréal and the Canadian Forces headquarters in London in 1942, London and the Netherlands in 1945 and a Manitoba women’s prison in 1962. Unlike some movies that jump back and forth confusingly, Bones of Crows handles the jumps well; the audience always knows where the story is situated.

After the beginning at Turtle Crossing, the story quickly skips ahead to 1930, where we are introduced to a young Aline Spears making music with her family: her sister Perseverance and brothers Tye and Johnnie, her loving, piano-playing mother, January, and guitar-playing father, Matthew. They sing happily and speak Cree together (subtitles provided). Later, on the beautiful Manitoba grasslands, we see them perform a grass dance in gorgeous traditional costumes.

Spears and her siblings are eventually removed from their farm by Father Jacob, played by Quebecois actor Rémy Girard, who coerces January and Matthew to give them up, saying it is the law and they will be jailed if they do not. Though they comply, this removal leaves the parents broken. January and Matthew are played by Albertan actress Michelle Thrush and Nova Scotian actor Glen Gould.

Spears escapes the residential school before her siblings, leading to a completely different life. She joins the Air Force and marries in 1942 before leaving for the Canadian Forces headquarters in London, where she is offered a job in a secret division of the Air Force. She becomes a code talker for the Canadian military, and in 1945 she is still in London, pregnant. Her loving marriage turns abusive. Her daughter Taylor (played by Gail Maurice) becomes a lawyer and Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner and helps her seek justice. Spears’ sister Perseverance (Albertan actress Alyssa Wapanatâhk) does not escape the residential school. In part through Spears’ flashbacks, we see Perseverance become one of Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG).

Clements calls her film a darkly psychological drama “inherently connected in its telling to blood memory” which she describes as “the idea that we are living in the present but are affected by the lives and trauma of not only our own personal battles of survival, but those of our ancestors.”

The Ayasew Ooskana Pictures produced screenplay has many things to offer female moviegoers. These include congeniality, affection and many exchanges between female characters, loving mother-daughter relationships, intelligent female characters, unconventional careers, disapproving depictions of sexual abuse and the sexual exploitation of women, as well as focus on MMIWG.

Additionally, Clements gives the female audience a satisfying conclusion to one case of sexual predation: she shows a woman, Spears, confronting her rapist. This man, Father Miller, who eventually becomes a Cardinal, is also confronted by Taylor.

Many (male) film buffs swear by David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962) as the epic par excellence, but if you’re looking for an epic that has something to offer female viewers, you will be much better served by Bones of Crows.

Bones of Crows is unrated but warrants an R rating. It has a running time of 129 minutes and was released on June 2.

Alline Cormier
Film analyst

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