Keep Quiet hides its intentions for the briefest of moments. The picturesque opening image, a field of golden reeds, is disturbed by a melancholic tune, followed by the clang of prison cell doors, the stern voice of a prison guard, and the sound of handcuffs being removed. Come the film’s end, this opening collision between beauty and freedom with the coldness of steel and incarceration will reveal a more profound presence.
Shot on the lands of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, director Vincent Grashaw and writer Zach Montague’s reservation-set crime drama Keep Quiet is about an inescapable restlessness. The filmmakers describe Teddy Sharpe (Lou Diamond Phillips), a veteran officer with the Thunderstone Tribal Police Department, as “weathered”. Familiar with the troubled lives that populate the reservation, he’s unsettled by the guilt he carries over something that happened years before.
With new trainee Sandra Scala (Dana Namerode) in tow, who Teddy nicknames “Toto”, Teddy sets about passing on his knowledge. In an early scene, he tells her, “Res policing is all about temporary problem-solving: favors and leverage. You get everyone in this town through to the end of the shift, and then you hand the reins over to the next schmuck.”
Getting everyone through to the end of the shift becomes more difficult. There are inter-departmental tensions between Tribal and State Police, and Richie Blacklance (Elisha Pratt), a violent member of the Indian Blood Nation gang, has been released from jail. He’s supposed to be laying low, but the gang’s restless enforcer in the city immediately starts racking up the body count, settling vendettas against those that put him away, and shooting dead a city police officer. Meanwhile, Ritchie sets his sights on pulling his 15-year-old nephew Albert (Lane Factor) into the IBN brotherhood.
It’s not only Ritchie and Teddy who are restless; there’s something reaching out of the past for Sandra and many in the community. Ritchie’s mother, meanwhile, has cast out her son for his transgressions. When his efforts to reconnect are rejected, he asks her, “All the dead and broken kids, Mom. What’s that say about you?” Ritchie not only reminds his mother of her maternal shortcomings, but he was also taught how to get high and boost cars by his own family.
Keep Quiet never spares its audience from its inherent darkness. Grashaw and Montague, who used to police the Reservations, take us into a land filled with despair and damaged souls, where the weathered, beaten, and battered Teddy tries to make a difference, or as he’d say, stop the shit, even if it’s just for a night.
At its heart, Keep Quiet is a story about the fight between good and evil. Teddy and Ritchie’s tussle over Albert’s soul gives it a biblical resonance. Where Ritchie’s actions seek to perpetuate the cycle of violence, Teddy seeks to bring it to an end for one family.
Either way, Albert’s soul is symbolic of the foundations of the conflict between good and evil, although Keep Quiet doesn’t simplify its characters in such a reductive way. They are agents of deeper themes and ideas around the allure of gangland culture and the relationship between institutions of power and community.
There are moments in Keep Quiet when we might want Grashaw and Montague to delve deeper into the characters and story. Keep Quiet’s confidence in telling the story on its own terms might be seen as an abrupt and pared-back approach, but there’s a confidence in finding depth in its self-imposed brevity. Grashaw and Montague excel in saying only what’s necessary, picking their moment when a character speaks lands with impactful effect.
So, when the characters talk, we listen intently because it bears weight. Yet, Grashaw and Montague’s approach leaves the characters feeling like ghosts of themselves, not wholly formed, even though they share personal and revealing anecdotes. This might be symptomatic of the talkative nature of cinema, where everything is explained in detail, denying characters little mystery nowadays. Keep Quiet’s characters are not ghosts; they share only a part of themselves and keep the private parts of their lives private.
Grashaw describes himself as having an “investigative mindset”, and in his director’s statement, he says, “I’ve always been fascinated by street gang culture and the endless cycle for those who fall into it. It’s such an obvious, tragic way of life, I wanted to understand why anyone would put themselves in a situation that overwhelmingly leads to certain death or imprisonment.”
Keep Quiet is restless in its own soul because of its philosophical nature. It’s less about being a conversation that offers either answers or statements. Instead, it’s more about being a witness to human nature and the choices that we make and the kinds of people we both try and fail to be.
Keep Quiet Through a Jungian Lens
Teddy’s character can be critiqued through a Jungian lens. In his writings, the Swiss psychoanalyst suggested that moral authenticity comes from within, and not from moral or religious texts, because it’s something we must reckon with personally. Jung was an advocate for confronting our shadow complex, and Teddy is a protagonist who, by creating his own moral compass, is in search of moral authenticity, although he might not intellectualize it as such.
It’s as if Teddy has seen and heard the community’s anger about what has happened to their language, history, and families, and is actively reckoning with the type of moral policing needed. He even has the maturity to understand why they’re hated for wearing their uniforms and is accepting of that hatred. He tells Sandra, “You remember why they hate you and why they are allowed to. And then you go on every call to help them, not to prove them wrong.”
Keep Quiet is regularly heartbreaking in its buildup to a satisfyingly emotional crescendo. It’s the type of story where we should never settle comfortably with the notion that characters will survive. The fate of the characters isn’t controlled by the writer or director.
There’s a celestial heaven in the film that has dominion over life and death. Characters might appear the epitome of strength, but one can sense they’re all living in the shadows of more powerful forces, and life is as unprejudiced as it is unmerciful, which a story such as Keep Quiet depends on to keep the audience honest.
Grashaw and Montague have crafted a gritty look at the harsh reality of life on the Reservation. It is, however, beautifully shot, preferring to have life’s beauty and unpleasantness bleed into one another and pool together.
In spite of the story’s difficult circumstances, Keep Quiet never surrenders to its bleakness. Instead, it homes in on the fact that its characters haven’t given up and are still trying. Here, the people still believe in themselves and one another.
When the film ends, we are transported back to its beginning, to those images and the melancholic tune. They capture Keep Quiet’s spirit: a longing for calm and peace in a world filled with struggle and suffering.
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