Parents' Guide to Eureka

This compelling drama may seem opaque when you first start watching, but stick with it to understand its full purpose. Eureka starts with Mortensen as the antihero in a Western who's on the path of his missing daughter. But then you realize that his story is, in fact, just images on a screen, the Western serving as commentary on the power of images. Because although the Western is set in Native American territory, the only two Native Americans shown on-screen are a man in traditional garb singing to the sun and another man who serves as a bodyguard and servant to a White mistress (Chiara Mastroianni). What's more, Mastroianni and Mortensen's characters both have the actors' natural accents, evoking the spaghetti Western genre and the idea that derogatory images can quickly become international exports if those images are metaphorically dressed in cool, flashy ways.

Eureka's other two parts are just as evocative, with Clifford and LaPointe trying to stay emotionally afloat while the rest of their community suffers from the effects of racial poverty, depression from historical maltreatment, and the ramifications of some of the community turning to drugs, alcohol, or crime for some type of relief. The Amazonian rainforest is at the center of the final part, in which an Indigenous community practices spiritual togetherness—but one of their own almost brings that togetherness to a halt. To some viewers, Eureka might seem like it's saying a bunch of nothing. And the film does give clear indications that its storytelling methods are more abstract than those of other films, which won't be for all viewers. But for those who stick with the film and are interested in its themes, Eureka offers a powerful examination of how Western "civilization" isn't really all that civilized.