“It was time for me to get back to work,” said Wes Studi. That may seem like an odd thing to hear coming from a man with over 100 credits to his name, who regularly appears in four or five titles a year, but like everyone, the pandemic shook things up. What better way to go back to work than heading to the mountainous and river-strewn locale of Montana to do some fly-fishing with Brian Cox?
Studi plays Cox’s friend and fellow Vietnam War veteran in Joshua Caldwell’s film, Mending the Line, which follows a veteran (Sinqua Walls) returning home from the Middle East for therapy and discovering some healing through fly-fishing. It’s an immensely peaceful film that seems to heal the audience nearly as much as its characters, and Studi is a study presence, calm and reassuring. It’s a great little performance from the Indigenous actor famous for Dance with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, The New World, Street Fighter, and Avatar, and a great ‘return.’
Mending the Line and Fly-Fishing
“I certainly wanted to get back to work. I think it was the second film I did after restrictions were dropped a bit,” said Studi. “I could learn how to use a fly rod to fly-fish, and to work with Brian Cox, and the rest of the very talented cast that we had.”
“It’s very catching,” said Studi of fly-fishing, which he learned to do with the film and which is a central part of Mending the Line (and actual veterans’ recovery, thanks to organizations like Operation Healing Waters). “Being part of the running water, or at least having it all around us, it’s actually a kind of soothing feeling, especially through water that’s up to your chest or thereabouts. The water just moves around you, and it’s quite a feeling of comfort in a way. There’s a calming feeling that comes with focusing on one particular motion.” He continued:
You have some control, as much control as is possible in a kind of wildlife setting like that. I think that’s what produces the sort of spiritual kind of feeling that that can be accomplished when you’re doing that. As the picture itself points out, that’s one of the goals of finding that Zen and being able to take it with you, away from other parts of your life.
That thing everyone is looking for in Mending the Line, the thing that each of our souls call out for, is a kind of presence, focus, and calm contentment missing from our busy lives. There are many terms for it and many practices aimed to attain it. “It’s a part of every culture really, indigenous and otherwise,” said Studi. “It crosses boundaries, goes beyond us. It’s bigger than the individual or for the practice itself. I think it’s a universal.”
Being a Veteran and Coming Home
While all of us seek a kind of internal peace, it’s perhaps most needed by people with some kind of past trauma, of which the main three characters in Mending the Line represent. Sinqua Walls’ character suffered a traumatizing experience in a war zone, and was injured while many of his friends were killed. There’s a part of him which wants to return to combat, because of a kind of guilt or inability to adapt to peace. Studi is a veteran himself, and while he relates more with Brian Cox’s character than Walls’, he brought his own experiences into the film.
“In terms of Sinqua’s character having the desire to go back into the conflict zone, back into being a Marine, that was something I found somewhat unrelatable, but other parts, in terms of having come from a war zone and back into peace, it’s one of the more difficult things that I experienced on a personal level after Vietnam. And with that, I could relate, but I didn’t want to go back,” explained Stud. “It’s not the easiest thing to do in terms of coming from a war zone into peace. It can be just as difficult as going into it.”
Studi didn’t have fly-fishing to center himself after returning home from Vietnam.
Unfortunately, about the only therapy for any kind of treatment that was made available to myself at the time, back in 1969, were a few sessions where a psychologist or psychiatrist would ask you to take this bat and beat up this dummy, and get your anger out. So I think I went to one session and forgot about it after that.
“I’ve worked with other programs,” continued Studi. “There’s one in my hometown called Courses for Heroes that does the same thing for returning veterans, uses that sort of experience to let a person begin to explore their own problems, in terms of reintegrating into society.”
Wes Studi Found Focus in Acting
Of course, it helps to find peace if you’re in a place as beautiful as the setting of Mending the Line. “Southeastern Montana. Livingston was actually the city that we lived in, worked out of, mostly on the Yellowstone River there and some other locations thereabouts,” explained Studi. “Montana has a huge country there. It’s just amazingly beautiful, and just has a sense of bigness. It’s hard to put into words, you have to see it for yourself.”
“It’s a great environment for that, and it also can make you feel very small,” continued Studi. “But on the other hand, to be able to go about the business of fly-fishing, and actually hooking a fish and bringing it in, the whole thing is fairly barbaric. But it’s also life. There’s no getting around it. I think that’s what produces the Zen of it all, is that there are times when you have to get rid of distractions and focus to find your goal, and hopefully yourself as well.”
Wes Studi found himself in a similar way. It doesn’t have to be fly-fishing; many things can center a person and mend the lines of their past. Studi had his own trauma from war, but eventually found acting to be a healing exercise, something which could focus him and bring him into the present moment.
It took me two years to get back to the point that I was a functioning member of society […] Actually, I think acting became was a practice and a therapeutic exercise that turned into a career for me. Focus is a very therapeutic state.
From Blue Fox Entertainment, Mending the Line is now in theaters, with an upcoming digital and on demand release. You can find showtimes here and watch the trailer below.
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