10 Kanus, 150 Speere und 3 Frauen

An outstanding movie. Storytelling at its finest. Ten canoes is a story within a story and delves into a world that people rarely no about. Away from the clichéd Aboriginal art and instruments - we are propelled to live by proxy with two generations and experience their world, their humour. This was one of two most outstanding movies at this year's Cannes film festival. The only shame was that it was not in the official competition section but in the un certain regard. /however, showing great wisdom, the jury did realise and rightly so award for the first time ever a special jury prize to Ten Canoes. Written, shot and directed with a deft touch. Sheer class.

Sometimes all you need is magic. At least it seems so, when you see the real thing. If you happened to see Baz Luhmann's "Australia" and was confused, see this instead. It is the genuine article, about the magic, told with magic. It is circular, nested and webbed. It floats, and if you let it you will nearly be lost.

The cinematography here — all the cinematic values — are only slightly apparent and when they declare themselves, it is in the service of the story: switching from subdued color to bright to signal the shift of what story you are in. Otherwise, the camera is either in conventional documentary mode or in space following spirits across landscapes as they voyage from waterhole python ouroboros and back.

What we have here is good old oral storytelling supplemented by image, and highly structured. Essentially everything is told by an offscreen aboriginal narrator, whose convoluted beginning establishes all sorts of narrative pockets that are revisited later. The story is a tree, we are told and in its telling we visit many branches. There is a sort of beginning, but it is nearly too complicated to describe. There is an ending, but no. After a chuckle the narrator tells us he has no idea how it ends.

Ostensibly, the story is told by the off-screen narrator, of a hunting party of aboriginal men, who make ten bark canoes and go hunting and gathering in the swamp. Over that period in the story, a wise man tells a story to his impatient much younger brother. That "inner" story shifts to color. It is supposed to be in a time in between creation and the full solidifying of men on earth. So the characters in the inner story are played by the folks in the outer one, and the main threads are folded together: a matter of the young man's desire for the older brother's youngest wife.

But that is the merest of threads. We are told that the story is a tree. We literally see that tree shorn of bark and made into simple canoes. We literally see our hunters — in both stories — camping in trees. The story seems to ramble. There is sorcery, mystery, charmed turds. There is revenge, jokes, anthropology. Its all of a context. A point of all this is that there cannot be a point in the western sense. There isn't a linear narrative here with a message. There is a walkabout through a storyspace.

The very first event we see tells us this in a remarkable way. Our ten men are walking single file and the last man halts the party. He refuses to be last, he says, because someone is farting. The line is consequently reshuffled. It is a gentle device, one that sets the magic for what "follows," a non-linear shuffle.

The joke at the end has the same form. The last one (the youngest wife) is not how the thing ends.

The entire production, we are told, uses aboriginal talent exclusively.

You want to know the narrative power of carefully folded (meaning here: intuitively structured) narrative? See this.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

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.

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.

Rolf de Heer's film premiered as part of the Adelaide Festival with sound problems dogging the otherwise pristine print. The film looks great, and the narration with David Gulpilil is too important to miss, obviously, as I found it very difficult to keep up with the extremely complex set up/story. When hearing a new language such as this it is important to hear things clearly - sadly the capacity of the Adelaide Festival to screen the film was lacking on this front.

That said, the film is filled with compelling visuals not unlike one of the earlier films of de Heer, and it has some very quaint (albeit base) amusement wrapped into the story.

Set a 1000 years ago before white fellas came to Australia, this is a dual story, one told in the immediate black and white/sepia world of reality, and one told in the rich color of the Aboriginal dream time... both stories are pretty much the same, and the roles are played by the same actors in each, so there are points where it's easy to get a little confused by who is doing what and when - but over all this is what you'd call a worthy film - it has the look of an old documentary at times, and that's not a bad look.

I enjoyed it despite the technological problems of this screening.