Ten Canoes is my favorite Spout Mavens screener if I have watched so far.
I saw a little blurb about it from a Spout blog a month or two giving high praise to director Rolf de Heer as something like the most important director working right now. It was a shockingly definitive statement from what I recall. I think it was from Paul (Paul where have you been lately? I haven't seen a post from you in any of the groups for several months). Looking at his credits there were some movies that interested me a bit more than Ten Canoes though. Bad Boy Bubby looks potentially right up my alley actually. So I was hoping that I wouldn't be potentially be turned off to him by one movie when I may like some of his other ones.
The only think I could think about when looking at the cover of this movie and hearing the description was the movie Walkabout. After watching Ten Canoes I read all of the other Spout Maven reviews, and I'm incredibly surprised that no one else has mentioned Walkabout as another movie featuring aborigines yet. I did find that movie to be fairly good, but I didn't know if I could stand another movie that was much more like it. But I should have expected that a movie made from entirely within the perspective of the aboriginal culture would not be as bleak and menacing as many portions of Walkabout.
It was fascinating reading other Mavens' reviews of this film. Many saw the exact same things and had totally opposite intrinsic reactions. Some people liked the humorous elements, some of them thought they were completely fake. At the very beginning of the movie with the narration I thought I was going to be put off. But I was lulled in.
Some people remarked on how the story took too long with too many breaks, even though the movie self-consciously acknowledged that it is being told to someone who feels the same way. And it is essentially saying that if you as a viewer feel the same way, then you are in need of the same lesson as Jamie Gulpilil's character. But many reviewers have gone above and beyond that and said, they still don't buy it. I'm not sure what kind of movie they think this is, but to me it's one where you lay back and enjoy the scenery and get immersed into a world. It certainly isn't a world of nicely packaged, heavily edited products that are delivered to you in short time spans, the way we receive most of our narratives and entertainment. What is the point in rushing a story when you have all day to hear it?
At the same time you come to realize pretty quickly that people of this society have the same dynamics, emotions, vices and everything else that we do. There are some pretty colorful characters. Birrinbirrin and his obsession for honey is one of my favorite. Everyone has their own agenda that often gets in each other's way in often tragicomic ways. I am just realizing this! It is a lot like a Coen brothers film! Maybe not quite, but I think it touches on those elements that make stories and characters like that so interesting to me.
A lot of people also complained about the black and white portions of this movie. One practical complaint was that it was difficult to read the subtitles, but I don't remember that being an issue for me. Maybe they should adjust the contrast on their screen. Someone else complained that the function of this in order to remind you which of the two stories you were in was unnecessary. I did not think so. The fact that one actor played a person in each story would have made me potential confused. Also someone complained that it didn't look as beautiful in black and white and that it made the color scenes look all the more beautiful in contrast. What is the problem there!? That sounds like a good technique to me!
In the future I am quite excited to see more films from de Heer. And am slightly more excited about future screeners from Spout.
Rating: 8/10