I don't think I could have been more surprised by "Ten Canoes." I was actually rather disappointed when I recieved it in the mail, thinking "surely they could have sent me something more interesting than this." But then I made myself sit down and watch the thing...and I liked it! I was hooked right from the introduction, and narrator David Gulipilil's friendly, throaty laugh. I think I could probably listen to him tell stories all day, and not get bored. Gulipilil is really what makes this movie. His simple, amiable narration adds a lot of warmth and spirit to the story. Without him, this movie probably would have lived up to my earlier expectations of a dull anthropological drama.
Director Rolf de Heer keeps the storytelling vibe going with unexpected humor and little narrative touches, like the closeups used to introduce each character. The Aboriginal people of Raminginin also seemed like they really enjoyed getting in on the action. Each character has interesting little quirks. They seem like exactly the sort of characters you'd find in any fable or fairy tale. The movie contains many of these archetypes that I found really interesting in their universal appeal. There's almost a magical quality about it.
However, the way the story is told made it seem longer than it needed to be. DeHeer uses a story-within-a-story format that I didn't really think was necessary, and didn't seem to go anywhere. It would have been just as effective to dive right into the main action, rather than with a false start.
All in all, "Ten Canoes" is really worth checking out, especially for those folks interested in cultural anthropology. It has a strange warmth and humor about it that draws the viewer in and makes them innately (and inexplicably) interested in the action and the characters. Probably the most fascinating thing about the movie is its ability to make its characters transcend cultural differences by introducing them as classic archetypal figures. If ever a movie were a study in unity and common threads, "Ten Canoes" is it.