Netflix It: Whale Rider

Available from Netflix: Whale Rider, directed by Niki Caro

This is one of those movies where you just want to scream at the mean grandpa to stop being such a mean grandpa. Go ahead. But he won't hear you.

(Somewhat spoiler-y) synopsis from the movie's website:

In a small New Zealand coastal village, Maori claim descent from Paikea, the Whale Rider. In every generation for more than 1000 years, a male heir born to the Chief succeeds to the title.

The time is now. The Chief's eldest son, Porourangi, fathers twins - a boy and a girl. But the boy and his mother die in childbirth. The surviving girl is named Pai.

Grief-stricken, her father leaves her to be raised by her grandparents. Koro, her grandfather who is the Chief, refuses to acknowledge Pai as the inheritor of the tradition and claims she is of no use to him. But her grandmother, Flowers, sees more than a broken line, she sees a child in desperate need of love.

And Koro learns to love the child. When Pai's father, Porourangi, now a feted international artist, returns home after twelve years, Koro hopes everything is resolved and Porourangi will to accept destiny and become his successor.

But Porourangi has no intention of becoming Chief. He has moved away from his people both physically and emotionally. After a bitter argument with Koro he leaves, suggesting to Pai that she come with him. She starts the journey but quickly returns, claiming her grandfather needs her.

Koro is blinded by prejudice and even Flowers cannot convince him that Pai is the natural heir. The old Chief is convinced that the tribe's misfortunes began at Pai's birth and calls for his people to bring their 12-year-old boys to him for training.
He is certain that through a gruelling process of teaching the ancient chants, tribal lore and warrior techniques, the future leader of their tribe will be revealed to him.

Meanwhile, deep within the ocean, a massive herd of whales is responding, drawn towards Pai and their twin destinies.

When the whales become stranded on the beach, Koro is sure this signals an apocalyptic end to his tribe. Until one person prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the people. The Whale Rider.


   

The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island

Showing at the Hot Docs Film Festival: The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, directed by Suzanne Raes

Synopsis from the Hot Docs website:

Waiheke Island, New Zealand, might as well be a Greenpeace retirement village, ever since members of the pioneering crew of the famous Rainbow Warrior ship settled there. Advancing age causes the “burnt-out greenies” to wonder what their activism has achieved for the world as they look back on their adventures aboard Greenpeace’s first vessel. From her maiden voyage to her burial at sea, the Rainbow Warrior was more than just a ship; she was the symbol for an entire movement. In the memories of those who served as her crew, she was also a living thing, a protectress, and a colleague in the fight for environmental justice. Archival footage and interviews reveal telling differences between protests of the past and contemporary campaigning. Have celebrity endorsements supplanted direct action? Have chipper telemarketers replaced risk-taking demonstrators? Is Greenpeace still a movement—or a multinational? - Angie Driscoll

The film's website is here.

The Topp Twins

Showing at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Topp Twins, directed by Leanne Pooley

Synopsis from the TIFF website:

The story of one of New Zealand's most cherished and charmingly irrepressible performing duos finally reaches the big screen in Leanne Pooley's latest feature, The Topp Twins.

Through a compilation of interviews, performance footage, home videos and newsreel archives, Pooley's documentary introduces audiences to Jools and Lynda Topp, the world's only yodelling, lesbian, country-and-western-singing twins. The film combines an array of artful filmic formats, making audiences privy to an honest, intimate and entertaining portrait of two sisters who resist, often through satire and parody, the political and sexual norms of post-war New Zealand.

Their story spans fifty years, starting with their humble upbringing on a small dairy farm and leading to their internationally acclaimed present-day tours. While Pooley undoubtedly succeeds in demonstrating the twins' effortlessly comical stage presence, the film also acknowledges Jools's fight with and recovery from breast cancer, offering a glimpse past the superficial details of their public lives.

Interviews with the girls' onstage alter egos – Ken and Ken, Camp Mother and Camp Leader, and Prue and Dilly – steadily inject the story's biopic digressions with lighthearted humour, reminding audiences that their talents exceed and ultimately subvert the traditional preconceptions that could define or categorize their theatrical antics. The sisters maintain an aversion to classification that has allowed for limitless possibilities over the years. As they wittily put it, “We're not comedians, we're just singers who are funny.”

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that its real task goes beyond a simple showcasing of the twins' considerable skills. Through the use of newsreel footage and photography, Pooley charts their provocative careers alongside thirty years of seismic social change in New Zealand, demonstrating how the country struggled to find and define its national identity.

In this elegantly compiled work – part biopic, part concept film, part comedy – Pooley provides a strong reminder that what resists classification may be the very thing that has the power to restore unity, understanding and compassion in a tumultuous world.

The Topp Twins' website is here.

Netflix It: The Piano

Jane Campion's Bright Star debuted at Cannes earlier this year, but based on the subway ads I've seen, it looks to be in theaters soon (September 18, to be exact). Gear up for Bright Star (about John Keats and his passionate yet never consummated love affair with muse Fanny Brawne) by revisiting her most acclaimed film, The Piano. Warning: you will see Harvey Keitel's junk.

Synopsis from AllMovie.com:

Writer/director Jane Campion's third feature unearthed emotional undercurrents and churning intensity in the story of a mute woman's rebellion in the recently colonized New Zealand wilderness of Victorian times. Ada McGrath (Holly Hunter), a mute who has willed herself not to speak, and her strong-willed young daughter Flora (Anna Paquin) find themselves in the New Zealand wilderness, with Ada the imported bride of dullard land-grabber Stewart (Sam Neill). Ada immediately takes a dislike to Stewart when he refuses to carry her beloved piano home with them. But Stewart makes a deal with his overseer George Baines (Harvey Keitel) to take the piano off his hands. Attracted to Ada, Baines agrees to return the piano in exchange for a series of piano lessons that become a series of increasingly charged sexual encounters. As pent-up emotions of rage and desire swirl around all three characters, the savage wilderness begins to consume the tiny European enclave. Campion imbues her tale with an over-ripe tactility and a murky, poetic undertow that betray the characters' confined yet overpowering emotions: Ada's buried sensuality, Baines' hidden tenderness, and Stewart's suppressed anger and violence. The story unfolds like a Greek tragedy of the Outback, complete with a Greek chorus of Maori tribesmen and a blithely uncaring natural environment that envelops the characters like an additional player. Campion directs with discreet detachment, observing one character through the glances and squints of another as they peer through wooden slats, airy curtains, and the spaces between a character's fingers. She makes the film immediate and urgent by implicating the audience in characters' gazes. And she guides Hunter to a revelatory performance of silent film majesty. Relying on expressive glances and using body language to convey her soulful depths, Hunter became a modern Lillian Gish and won an Oscar for her performance, as did Paquin and Campion for her screenplay. Campion achieved something rare in contemporary cinema: a poetry of expression told in the form of an off-center melodrama.

You can also read about The Piano in this book.