Director led Adam Beach to pain, deliverance in Exile

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This article was published 16/02/2024 (958 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For Adam Beach, a particular scene in the suspense drama Exile (opening Saturday at McGillivray VIP) came loaded with a tragic resonance from his own life.

In the film, the Saulteaux Anishinaabe actor plays Ted Evans, a loving husband and father whose life is shattered when he accidentally kills another man’s family while driving drunk.

While serving time in prison, Ted receives a message from that enraged patriarch, threatening the lives of his own family if he ever tries to reconnect with them after completing his sentence.

Ted duly lives a life of exile in a cabin in the woods, forcing his wife Sara (Camille Sullivan) to make a dramatic effort to retrieve her husband from his self-imposed exile.

Beach, 51, describes the scene in question as a flashback to the accident. It carried enormous weight for the actor, who lost his own mother, Sally, at the age of eight to a drunk driver when they were living at the Dog Creek First Nation reserve.

Two months later, his father, desolate from the loss, died by drowning.

Beach says he tapped into his own father’s despair performing the scene.

“I tried to find how my father felt, the month before he died, after my mom died, because he was so heavy into emotion and depression and drinking, and sadness and sorrow.

“I was playing my dad driving that car,” Beach says in a phone interview from Los Angeles, where he is currently shooting a yet unnamed TV series for Apple TV.

He told the director, Jason James, about how his mother had died. James asked him if he’d like to tape up a picture of her in the car.

“And I nearly vomited and cried at the same time,” Beach recalls. “But I knew the importance of it.

“So you see my mom’s picture in the car; that was my way of paying respect to my mom, and my family, but also to take in that trauma of how I felt.”

Beach says he personally related to Ted’s decision to cut himself off from his friends and family in the wake of the tragedy.

“That’s how I grew up,” Beach says. “I was like: Am I crazy for wanting to be alone and feel comfortable in abandonment?

“I’d sit on a stone that says ‘Knowledge is power’ at John M. King high school as a kid, and sit there for an hour, just trying to figure out stuff. Just wanting to be alone and assess.”

Beach says of Ted’s flashback of his happier family life suggests a glimmer of hope within that despair, and reflects the way he looks back at his own life.

“I could always just close my eyes and see my aunts and uncles and brothers and relatives and friends,” he says. “And there’s joy.”

Beach lives in Las Vegas but frequently makes trips to Winnipeg at the behest of Premier Wab Kinew, who is a relation.

“I never imagined that that place was available to (an Indigenous person),” Beach says, adding he has taken on a personal mission of outreach, both for homeless people in Winnipeg and in northern communities.

“I’m going to do groundwork for Wab,” he says. “I’m trying to help create some strategies and opportunities for our community, and I hope that I can.”

Exile plays this week at Cineplex McGillivray VIP before becoming available on VOD Feb. 20 on iTunes, Apple and Google Play. A live Q&A with Marshall Williams and producer Sammie Astaneh will take place at McGillivray VIP cinemas following the screenings Saturday at 4:30 p.m. and Sunday at 7:25 p.m.

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