Ten Canoes

I encourage you to also read the other comments on this site for TEN CANOES as each also will add to the clear understanding of this astonishing Australian film by master film maker Rolf DeHeer. He is a Dutch immigrant to Australia whose unique look at this country has now produced a superb library of films each different, that contribute to a fascinating movie spectrum of impressions of Australian life. TEN CANOES is an Aboriginal parable set possibly ten thousand years ago. It has hilarious casual dialog and familiar situations depicting tribal family and community life that humanizes this people in a heightened way so accessible to audiences of 2007. At this time in a new century we are now blessed with a sequence of Australian aboriginal themed films I encourage you to find and view in their production order: JEDDA directed by Charles Chauvel in 1956, WALKABOUT d: Nicolas Roeg in 1970, STORM BOY in 1976, THE LAST WAVE d: Peter Weir in 1977, RABBIT PROOF FENCE d; Phil Noyce in 2003, THE TRACKER d Roldf De Heer, and now TEN CANOES. Incredibly and as a bonus celebrated Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil features in all of them except Jedda... and as a bonus in theme, his son Jamie is the lead actor in TEN CANOES with David narrating. TEN CANOES will take you to a reality and a community unlike anything ever depicted in any film ever. As alike those above, it is presented and magnificently filmed in cinemascope differently to any Australian (or 'primitive') feature I have ever had the fascinating engrossing pleasure of seeing. Just to study the timeless faces alone is a peep into history and often delivered with very funny and genuinely suspenseful and heartwarming results. De Heer is now a film maker par excellence now finally getting major recognition in this country with a broad range of different and arresting films unlike any other film maker I can name. just for starters, check out the comments for BAD BOY BUBBY, ALEXANDRA'S PROJECT, THE QUIET ROOM, alone for a jaw dropping range of themes. Even if you see TEN CANOES and find the journey into the Australian stone age initially difficult, you will be astonished at the visuals presented and in awe of the fact this was ever captured on film with such humor and accessible humanities.

This is a truly unique cinema experience - story-telling at its finest. The film documents Aboriginal culture, history and humor in a way that I have never seen on-screen before.

The voice-over narration of David Gulpilil is excellent. The cinematography is awesome. The film oozes with authenticity and was filmed on location in very remote areas of the Northern Territory of Australia.

It's tragic that this culture should be so remote and foreign to Australians (what to speak of others elsewhere in the world).

This film is full of the dignity of this honorable race of people who have so much to be proud of.

On a recent visit to Melbourne, I came across a poster for the movie Ten Canoes. It described a film about Australian Aborigines and claimed to portray them authentically. The film sets a new standard for cross-cultural understanding. Ever since Whale Rider I have been entranced by movies about aboriginal culture. This film extends the genre onto a higher plane.

The narrator tells a story about men hunting for goose eggs in canoes while one tells a story from the ancient times. Both stories are woven exquisitely together to form a dream-like telling. The cinematography captures the actual remote locations the tribe inhabits. The characters are portrayed as authentically as can be, probably because they are. (At least, it seemed that way to a white guy from Boston.) I don't know if any are actual actors.

If you have interest in any aboriginal culture or anything Australian, you should see this movie. If you love great story telling, you must see it.

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.

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.