Ten Canoes

"Ten Canoes" resembles a National Geographic documentary with dramatic overtones and is sometimes hard to follow due to the thick accent of the narrator but it's nevertheless absorbing due in part to its very oddness, being a story about aboriginal Australians (though written, directed and shot by a Caucasian team headed by director Rolf de Heer). Structurally it is a story within a story about a how a tribe in the pre-colonial period handled the sudden disappearance of one of its female members. The story allows de Heer to illustrate how members of this primitive community were not so very different from ourselves in their essential human characteristics. The mere placement of a group of naked, primitive people as central characters in a fictional motion picture drama is, to Western eyes, enough to command the attention. The more or less constant narration tends to hinder dramatic development so that we never connect deeply with any of the characters yet we empathize with their predicaments. Generally speaking, it paints a sympathetic picture of a people whom fate has brutalized and who now are only beginning to recover and get back a sense of who they are and what they come from, in part through films like this one.

Wow. If your main prior experience of Aboriginal film is with black and white documentary footage from the 50s and 60s or with the many films examining the impact of white culture on black society and the often tragic results of their interplay, this will turn it on its head. The movies worships nature and the land in the same way Aboriginal culture views the land not as backdrop or something to be exploited, but as almost human itself. Without qualification or embellishment, the camera marvels at the beauty of the landscape, and we do too. The story is set many generations ago, but there is no sense of time; it could be yesterday, or 40,000 years ago. Time hasn't changed the way of life of the people we are introduced to nor the lessons the young must learn to reach maturity, as our hero Yeeralpiril discovers. David Gulpilil's narration is so masterful it suggests he has another twenty stories up his sleeve just as beguiling to tell you as this one. Film-making like this is a rare experience. Let there be more.

On a recent visit to Melbourne, I came across a poster for the movie Ten Canoes. It described a film about Australian Aborigines and claimed to portray them authentically. The film sets a new standard for cross-cultural understanding. Ever since Whale Rider I have been entranced by movies about aboriginal culture. This film extends the genre onto a higher plane.

The narrator tells a story about men hunting for goose eggs in canoes while one tells a story from the ancient times. Both stories are woven exquisitely together to form a dream-like telling. The cinematography captures the actual remote locations the tribe inhabits. The characters are portrayed as authentically as can be, probably because they are. (At least, it seemed that way to a white guy from Boston.) I don't know if any are actual actors.

If you have interest in any aboriginal culture or anything Australian, you should see this movie. If you love great story telling, you must see it.

For the Australian Aborigines who are said to date back 65,000 years, the ancestor spirits are still alive. They are a part of an Aborigine's "dreaming" and come to life in the stories indigenous Australians have told through the ages. Playfully narrated by Australian icon David Gulpilil, Ten Canoes, directed by Rolf de Heer (The Tracker) and Peter Djigirr, tells a dreaming story that acts as a lesson for a young man in the tribe who feels that the youngest wife of his older brother should be his. The story has elements of kidnapping, sorcery, and revenge but is mostly about values: how a community living in a natural environment before the coming of the White man developed laws and systems to guide its people. The cast consists of indigenous residents of the Arafura region and many of the visuals recreate the photographs of Donald Thompson, a Melbourne anthropology professor who spent time in the 1930s with the Yolngu people of the Arafura Swamp.

Set a thousand years ago in central Arnhem Land near the Arafura Swamp in northern Australia, east of Darwin, a group of Ganalbingu tribesmen embark on a hunt for magpie geese, a wild bird used to sustain the tribe. To navigate the crocodile-infested swamp, elder Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) leads the tribe in building canoes made out of bark. When he discovers that Dayindi (played by Gulpilil's son, Jamie) has a crush on his third wife, he tells him a story set in a mythical time after the great flood that explains how his people developed laws to govern their behavior, the same laws used by the tribes today. To distinguish between the past and the "present", De Heer uses muted color to show the ancient landscape and black and white for the more modern story.

In the beginning, Ridjimiraril (Crusoe Kurddal) lives with his three wives, Banalandju, Nowalingu (Frances Djulibing), and Munandjarra in a camp with others, including Birrinbirrin (Richard Birrinbirrin), an overweight elder whose sole pleasure in life is to eat honey. Ridjimiraril's younger brother, Yeeralparil (Jamie), who lives in the single men's camp, fancies the beautiful Munandjarra and spends much time stealing visits to the other camp, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. When a stranger approaches without warning, the men are frightened, especially when he tells them that he wants to trade objects of magic.

The local sorcerer warns the men of danger but life proceeds normally until the jealous Nowalingu disappears after a fight with Banalandju. Though the others believe that she simply ran away, Ridjimiraril is convinced that she was abducted by the stranger and receives confirmation for his fear when an old uncle appears and says that he saw his wife in a camp with the stranger. The men are galvanized into action and a war party is prepared. Through myth and illuminating visuals, Ten Canoes generates a greater awareness and understanding of indigenous Australian culture and acts as an impressive counterweight to the argument that Aborigines should give up their past and join the modern world. That the film is entertaining and deeply moving as well as informative is a very welcome bonus indeed.

This is a truly unique cinema experience - story-telling at its finest. The film documents Aboriginal culture, history and humor in a way that I have never seen on-screen before.

The voice-over narration of David Gulpilil is excellent. The cinematography is awesome. The film oozes with authenticity and was filmed on location in very remote areas of the Northern Territory of Australia.

It's tragic that this culture should be so remote and foreign to Australians (what to speak of others elsewhere in the world).

This film is full of the dignity of this honorable race of people who have so much to be proud of.