TV Reviews : HBO’s ‘Last of Tribe’ Retells Indian Story

With Oscar fever for “Dances With Wolves” now a year past, the fascination with American Indians is still part of the Zeitgeist , judging from the surprising fact that that movie’s supporting actor nominee, Graham Greene, has two new starring roles in the space of a week. Next weekend his theatrical feature “Thunderheart” opens; meanwhile, tonight, he has the title role in “The Last of His Tribe,” premiering on HBO at 8.

This fact-based story was filmed for TV once before, actually, as the well-regarded “Ishi: The Last of His Tribe” in 1978. At about 90 minutes, the modestly engaging new version runs an hour shorter and focuses on the final years in the life of Ishi (Greene), the last “wild” American Indian in the United States, who stumbled into the white man’s world in Northern California in 1911 after the few remaining members of his tribe were shot by settlers.

The underseen Jon Voight co-stars as Dr. Alfred Kroeber, a UC San Francisco anthropologist and the lone academic able to communicate in Ishi’s forgotten Yahi dialect. He takes the marooned survivor under his wing and Ishi lives out his days on campus in a suit and tie, save for a brief, sad visit to the territory where Ishi’s contemporaries lived and died, which affords a few fleeting flashbacks.

Both subtle as can be, and both terrific, Greene and Voight play their respective roles necessarily uptight. The “wild” intruder on contemporary life has a mellow, stolid temperament that adapts quickly, if uneasily, to the world of neckties and silverware. The good professor is latently compassionate but emotionally constricted, in relation both to Ishi and to his seriously ill wife (Anne Archer). This being 1911, Robert Bly will not be coming around to help either of them out.

Kudos to writer Stephen Harrigan and director Harry Hook for not introducing any more conflict--or stereotypes of noble American Indians or exploitative white men--than necessary into an essentially low-key story. They don’t force the inevitably elegiac tone in your face. Only with the final scene do they trade the dryness for something more mystical, tear-jerking and borderline-hokey, which by then may be excusable.

* “The Last of His Tribe” has repeat airings on HBO Tuesday, Friday and on April 8, 12 and 16.