SlipOfTheTongue Blog

This is the definition of a good first feature.  It's not over-complicated, takes place in very few locations and involves one simple twist that makes it unique from other films.  Director Gela Babluani sets up the story at a deliberate pace that creates a sense of uncertainty but he doesn't telegraph what is to come.  (People who can't tough out the slow beginning should stick to American movies.)  There is a bit of Hitchcock both in the manner in which the story is set up and in the way that its main character is thrust into the middle of extraordinary circumstances. 

An ordinary day laborer (Sebastien, a roofer) who is down on his luck finds himself faced with an opportunity and he takes it, stepping into another world.  In this world brutality and finance once again meet as they have in many recent horror films.  Once the character crosses over we ourselves cross over with him into a different kind of movie.  This new movie feels more like a game and the characters are chess pieces.  It then becomes our duty (unless we choose otherwise) to watch this game play out to the end.  It is like getting in line for a frightening roller coaster ride at an amusement park and not being able to back out.  We are trapped.  There is nothing particuarly flashy in the way the director causes this to happen but in 13 TZAMETI there are definite choices being made and I like most of them.  It almost doesn't matter how the movie ends.  It's more about the twist and the ticking clock.

Without giving anything away, suffice it to say that there is a trend toward explicitly showing man's inhumanity to man in the movies these days.  It seems we are so oversaturated by media stimuli and so snake bitten by cynicism that the only way for us to feel "changed" at the movies is for us to experience the horror of torturing or killing our fellow man.  I don't blame the movies for this.  They are a reflection of the times.  Leave it to a good filmmaker to exploit our moral weaknesses and to get noticed while doing it.      

When the world signed on for a string of movies based on the Harry Potter book series we knew this thing would take a while.  H.P. and the Order of the Phoenix is perhaps the one installment so far which feels like setup for something to come and not very much like a stand alone movie.  What we get is another small link which is part of a very long narrative chain (my prediction is that we will have run out of fossil fuels by the time the last movie is completed).  My understanding is that there were many details in the book which were left out of the movie.  It feels that way.  I enjoyed the craftsmanship of this movie and had a good time with some of the directorial flourish, but wished that there was more of a beginning, middle and end. 

The film TEN CANOES centers on a story within a story.  It is the recreation of an oral tale told by an elder member of an Australian Aboriginal tribe in the language of Ganalbingu.  The film was inspired by a series of photographs taken by anthropologist Donald Thomson circa 1930.  In one black and white photograph tribe members scouted for wood to be used in the building of canoes.  It is this journey which serves as a backdrop for the story being told about tribe members past. 

TEN CANOES has a studied, anthropological quality itself and this style is maintained through much of the film.  The funnier moments come and go rather quickly and one longs for more of them.  All of this has been channeled through the directorial sensibilities of Rolf de Heer, who loves his subject matter very much.  One suspects that narrator David Gulpilil Ridijimiraril Dalaithngu (thank God I took high school typing) loves himself as well.  Before we even know what is going on we are being told what a great story we are about to hear.  The warm up unfolds at a somewhat languorous pace.  The film starts with slow tracking shots of unblemished Aboriginal lands and the rhythms of the first part of the film are an echo of that pacing, slow to the point of stillness.

As we transition from the time period of the storyteller to the time period of the story being told, we move from color to black and white and back to color again.  This is a good way of distinguishing between time periods, but the black and white sequences are distinctly less satisfying.  The color cinematography in this film is so striking and accomplished that the black and white suffers by comparison.  One wonders if the color was simply removed in the digital intermediate process in order to simulate black and white for certain scenes.  The end result is not as lush and expressive as one might hope.

As the older narrator spins his cautionary tale to the younger tribe member Dayindi (actor Jamie Dayindi Gulpilil Dalaithngu) it becomes clear that the point of this story is meant to be revealed over a long span of time.  We must wait for the outcome and then judge its relevance.  And wait.  Taken at its essence the moral of this story is practical but not particularly earth shattering nor profound.  But it does fit the story.  Essentially, it is "be careful what you wish for or you might get it".  Patience is also held up as an important virtue.  To an extent we are also rewarded for our own patience as viewers.  We are asked to wait out the entire sequence of events before we know why the story is really being told.  One can infer that the notion of “patience” also implies respect for land and tradition and history.  These are things that never change in the Aboriginal culture of this story and young people (like Dayindi) often, at first, do not appreciate such things.
               
What is amazing about this movie is that if you can wait out its small self-indulgences (the toothy, self-congratulatory grinning of the actors, the beamingly overconfident narration) you will be rewarded with a strange gift.  The movie works.  Almost invisibly, beyond its creative flourishes, in the end, it is a story well told.  There is a character who meets an untimely end.  The way in which the others say goodbye to him is both fascinating and poignant.  In the end the film succeeds in telling a story and conveying the moral behind it.  When it is over you feel as though you have been someplace you haven’t been before.  Though the movie seems to be, to a large degree, fabrication you still feel as though you have been to a place where tradition still exists, and where the people co-exist and commune with nature and pass on lessons to their young.  It is a simple, sometimes dangerous life.  Although the Aboriginal communities are largely modernized today, the feeling of communing with nature is part of their history and the spirits of their ancestors must still prowl the landscapes.  This movie is full of great, fascinating faces, particularly the women.  And the character of Birrinbirrin is quite humorous to watch.  The real life Aboriginees act out the various parts and this gives the movie a feeling of authenticity.  In the end, there are even a few jokes about farting and penis size thrown in.  Hey, in a land this rough you've got to keep yourself entertained.  TEN CANOES is a story worth telling, about a simple and fascinating existence, one that spans back centuries.