Some dreams are nightmares. Your heart pounding, gasping and sweating and screaming in terror. You’re so relieved when it’s over and realize it was just that. A dream.  

But some nightmares have their basis in reality.  Which makes them even more horrifying. 

Carl Bessai’s film,  Unnatural and Accidental,  is a dream that quickly thrusts you into   a nightmare.  Adapted from the play by Marie Clements, the story is ripped from the obituaries: the deaths of 10 Aboriginal women during the 80’s and 90’s from acute alcohol poisoning.  Living on the margins of society, each of the victims subsisted in the Vancouver’s skid row, either as prostitutes, alcoholics or both.  Their deaths were assumed to be the result of their self-destructive excesses.  Thing was, it was anything but—a White barber was later convicted in their murders. 

Hence the horror and racism and irony of the true drama that became Unnatural and Accidental,  the movie.  Bessai’s dreamlike, moody film opens with a young professional Native woman (Carmen Moore) seeking to find her long-lost mother (Tantoo Cardinal.)  She scours the bowels of the city’s dark eastside; the pimps, whores, drunks and throw-aways who reek the odorous alleys nice folks dare not venture.  

What starts out a drama quickly becomes a surreal decline into urban Aboriginal hell. Callum Keith Rennie’s portrayal of the murderous rapist is among the most chillingly depraved onscreen since Ralph Fiennes’s Amon Goethe in Schindler’s List.  Cast as a mechanic in the film version, the killer's loathing of “brown” women drives his ghastly eroticism in their suffering. 

It isn’t only difficult to watch, it’s a nightmare. 

The film borrows heavily from the stage production.  Bessai’s attempt to segue between uber reality and surreality is an artistic risk that works.  Almost.  The sets are not stage props; you can virtually smell the streets and dank apartments of downscale Vancouver.  This is where it gets confusing—early on, Moore’s character Rebecca is knocking on doors and sitting in cafes asking for leads to find her mother.  In her search, she comes across each of the victims, which we come to realize, aren’t really there at all.  It’s their spirits who are giving her guidance, but we less savvy sorts don’t figure that out immediately.  After all, dunderheads like me do watch movies. 

Likewise, sticking to a theatrical approach prevents the viewer to come to know each of the victims as people rather than faceless, lost Native women.  The film is most powerful when Bessai does provide glimpses, albeit briefly, into the lives of the characters.  The scene with the doomed mom carrying a toy airplane for her son is gripping and tragic; it reminds us that these ladies weren’t faceless at all.  They were moms, lovers, daughters, and friends.  These women were discarded by a bigoted society that chose to dismiss their deaths as inevitable; allowing a bloodlusting predator to stalk the streets unabated for more than a decade.   

Whereas a stylistic rendering of terror  can add impact (a la A Clockwork Orange,) it can also distract.  Unnatural and Accidental  does both—its gauzy filming bolsters the dreamlike quality,  but eliminating the backstory of the characters furthers the anonymity of the souls whose lives were deemed expendable. 

Despite these shortcomings, Unnatural and Accidental  is an important, compelling and must-see film.  It will kick you in the gut and kick you again.  But, tragically, unlike a bad dream, this story was based on truth; a truth most White North Americans are wanton to acknowledge. 

That’s the worst kind of nightmare of all. 

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Unnatural and Accidental

Producer and Director: Carl Bessai
Screenplay: Marie Clements
Starring: Carmen Moore; Callum Keith Rennie; Tantoo Cardinal; Reg Tupper; Michelle Thrush; Tinsel Korey; Margo Kane 

Unnatural and Accidental  is currently screening at film festivals throughout North America. For more information, please visit the film’s MySpace site at:  www.myspace.com/uandathemovie   

Unnatural and Accidental: The Trailer