| Prior to its release, Whale Rider
has already won big on the festival circuit. The Toronto, Seattle,
San Francisco, and, most importantly, Sundance film festivals
(among others) have honored the film with major awards. The
movie thus qualifies as “much anticipated”; its poster has been
hanging at my local art house for several months.
The hype, such as it is, is largely justified. Whale Rider
focuses on the Maori people of New Zealand, who, outside of
1995’s Once Were Warriors, have rarely been the focus
of a major studio release. (Some of them did, however, carry
things around in the backdrop of The Piano.) As such,
the film cannot help but be informative in an ethnographic
sort of way, but it is more than that. Its simple story is
well told and manages to embody themes both grand (the preservation
of ancient traditions in an age seduced by the wonders of
modernism and technology) and personal (the challenges in
growing up and finding one’s place in a social order that
can be very hostile).
The plot centers on Paikea (Castle-Hughes), a twelvish
Maori girl. The youngest in a long hereditary line of chiefs,
Paikea will never ascend to that position because it is traditionally
reserved for males. The current chief is Paikea’s grandfather,
Koro (Patene). Koro is a staunch traditionalist who
sees himself as the sole caretaker of the Maori way of life.
His stern traditionalism has estranged him from his son Porourangi
(Curtis), Paikea’s father. Paikea’s mother and twin
brother died in childbirth, leaving Koro very concerned that
his son quickly find a new wife. Distraught over these events
and his father’s impersonal reaction to them, Porourangi has
since put the village long behind him, pursuing a career as
an artist far from his natural home.
Thus Paikea was raised by her grandparents. As a surrogate
parent, Koro alternates emotionally between a gruff love and
an austere authoritarianism, and Paikea uses their shared
love of Maori myths to become close to him. When Koro begins
to train the 12-year-old boys in the village to see who has
“the right stuff” to someday become chief, Paikea secretly
learns many of the same skills. While Paikea is as reverent
toward Maori custom as anyone in the village, her grandfather
sees her enthusiasm as a sign of the traditions’ collapse.
He dates the beginning of the village’s troubles to Paikea’s
birth, and believes that her insolence is bringing down the
wrath of the Maori divinities.
The tension between these two characters builds up to a climactic
magical realist deus ex machina. While the film’s ending
might not suit all tastes, Whale Rider nonetheless
does a great job of putting realistic, understandable human
faces on abstract ideas. It suffers, however, from the tension
of its very premise. The viewer is to feel sorrow for the
decline of Maori values and culture, but it is these very
traditions, in the form of Koro’s unwillingness to recognize
his granddaughter’s obvious qualifications to be chief, that
stand in our heroine’s way. Whale Rider takes no stand
on whether modern feminism is a “contamination” of Maori culture
or an “improvement” upon it. In refusing to meditate on the
implications of its own conflict, Whale Rider fails
to be a great movie. But in telling a compelling story
about believable and attractive characters, it certainly is
a very good one.
—Mike O’Connor
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While we would never encourage anyone to destroy a video... 
