This movie has been out since the 90s, but what a daring film. Several great aspects:
1. So many movies about Polynesia focus on either a) how idyllic things were before coloniziation/modernity [compare similar treatment of Native America; see also the irresistable "Noble Savage" or "Garden of Eden" stereotypes]; or b) how bad the overtaking ["Western"] culture has made things since.
Here, by contrast, is a daring look at social problems that are PARTLY the responsibility of the modernized indigenous community -- alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc.
2. So many movies about Polynesia are made by outsiders. This one is made by leading members of the indigenous artistic community, many of whom positively relish their cultural heritage. I think these are many of the same folks who later gave us Whalerider. Yet, like true patriots, they criticize the community they love.
3. This is one of those rare movies that blurs the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys." The villain regularly becomes the apparent hero, horrifies us when he returns to being the villain, and repeatedly wins us back over, just as he does his abused spouse and neglected family.
Similarly, the heroine of the film is also regularly pathetic in her refusal to protect herself or her children, and in her own returns to and from her own substance abuse. Yet we love her even as we acknowledge that she's foolish in helping to author her own misfortune. [This aspect could well have made the movie end as a classic tragedy -- heroine whose character flaws irresistibly contribute to her own undoing.]
[For comparison on this note of blurring the lines, Last of the Mohicans does this with its explanation of why the "bad" Indian [can't remember his name], allied with France, has come to hate the Yanquis and/or the British. Again, blurring the lines between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys.]
4. You have to give this movie credit for being very depressing but, in the end, triumphant.
Does anyone else dig on this film? My top 10 all-time list is impacted, but i'd put it in my top 20 or 25, which is still saying something.
1. So many movies about Polynesia focus on either a) how idyllic things were before coloniziation/modernity [compare similar treatment of Native America; see also the irresistable "Noble Savage" or "Garden of Eden" stereotypes]; or b) how bad the overtaking ["Western"] culture has made things since.
Here, by contrast, is a daring look at social problems that are PARTLY the responsibility of the modernized indigenous community -- alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc.
2. So many movies about Polynesia are made by outsiders. This one is made by leading members of the indigenous artistic community, many of whom positively relish their cultural heritage. I think these are many of the same folks who later gave us Whalerider. Yet, like true patriots, they criticize the community they love.
3. This is one of those rare movies that blurs the lines between "good guys" and "bad guys." The villain regularly becomes the apparent hero, horrifies us when he returns to being the villain, and repeatedly wins us back over, just as he does his abused spouse and neglected family.
Similarly, the heroine of the film is also regularly pathetic in her refusal to protect herself or her children, and in her own returns to and from her own substance abuse. Yet we love her even as we acknowledge that she's foolish in helping to author her own misfortune. [This aspect could well have made the movie end as a classic tragedy -- heroine whose character flaws irresistibly contribute to her own undoing.]
[For comparison on this note of blurring the lines, Last of the Mohicans does this with its explanation of why the "bad" Indian [can't remember his name], allied with France, has come to hate the Yanquis and/or the British. Again, blurring the lines between the "good" guys and the "bad" guys.]
4. You have to give this movie credit for being very depressing but, in the end, triumphant.
Does anyone else dig on this film? My top 10 all-time list is impacted, but i'd put it in my top 20 or 25, which is still saying something.
