When I set up my Wellington Film Festival review page, I was having thoughts of sorting the films into "documentary" and "fiction" – but then I stopped short. Where to draw the line? It seems to me that the distinction is getting increasingly blurred. Both documentaries on my list – "American Cannibal" and "La Planete Blanche" – aren't your typical dry and impartial observer sort of film, in fact the first one *may* just turn out to have been completely made up. "Ten Canoes" on the other hand – although firmly within the fiction genre – incorporates enough elements of a documentary to make it worthwhile watching on that account alone – say, if you are interested in the traditional life and customs of Australian aboriginal people. And I am sure that for many people this alone will be a reason to see the film.

It should not. The film easily stands up on its own artistic merit, and to praise it only on account of the fact that it tells an indigenous story in an indigenous language with an indigenous cast, is both patronizing and unfair to the filmmakers, who deserve that it be taken just as seriously as any other film.

The first ten or so minutes already made me feel I had not wasted my time, they are of such exquisite and mesmerizing beauty. Tracking quietly and endlessly along a river which gradually turns into a swamp, we dive straight into the landscape of Arnhemland, northern Australia. Then a storyteller takes us to the time of the ancestors – a world which is filmed entirely in black and white, a stark contrast with the intense colours of the opening.

A group of men march through the bush in search of bark to build canoes. They are planning to hunt for goose eggs in the swamps – apparently this is something of a yearly ceremony which unites hunters from different villages. The two main characters are introduced: a venerable Older Brother, who appears to be the chief of his village and has three wives, and his Younger Brother, who has taken a fancy to the youngest of those wives. The other men make jokes and tease him about this, and Older Brother decides to tell his Younger Brother a story… about the ancestors.

We are back in full gorgeous technicolor. Ridjimiralil is an old venerable chief who has three wives, and Yeeralparil is his younger brother. Yeeralparil, who as a young unmarried man lives with the boys in a camp apart from the main village, has cast an eye on the youngest of his older brother's wives… As the story unfolds and folds in upon itself, we come to realize that it is not the love story of the two young people which stands central, as it would in a story told by Europeans. Rather, the old man's story branches out like a tree to include the affairs of the entire tribe.

A stranger appears, who may be a sorcerer, and maybe bewitches the shit which the men have left unburied in the bush. The tribe's own sorcerer must perform a ritual to make their village safe. Then Nowalingu, the second of the older man's three wives, disappears. No one knows what happened, but suspicion falls on the mysterious stranger. A relative who comes to visit from another village, seems to confirm that suspicion. A bad spirit enters the village. An old man who is overly fond of honey plays a part. A conflict arises, and blood is shed. And nothing turns out quite the way the audience – or the characters for that matter – expected, but patience is rewarded in the end.

The film was developed in collaboration with the people of Raminging in Arnhemland. The voice-over of the storyteller holds the different time layers of the story together and provides tongue-in-cheek comment. The storyteller is none other than David Gulpilil, who played the young Aboriginal in Nicolas Roegg's wonderful "Walkabout" back in 1970, and has been the Aboriginal face of the Australian film industry ever since – from "Rabbit Proof Fence" all the way to "Crocodile Dundee". His son Jamie Dayindi Gulpilil plays the character of the younger brother – both younger brothers, in fact – and somehow manages to look just like Orlando Bloom. The other parts are taken by people from the Raminging community, including the irrepressible Richard Birrinbirrin, who also acted as associate producer.

The story that is told is a very slow one, a fact which the storyteller playfully remarks upon whenever the flow of the tale in far-away time is interrupted to show us what the people in not-so-far away time are getting up to next – building bark canoes, hunting after those goose eggs, stopping to prepare food, building tree houses for the night to protect them from the swamp crocodiles, getting home again. This is our own story, the storyteller says, and we tell it our own way. It may be a different sort of story, but a good story all the same. Has your patience run out yet?- he asks. But then patience is the point.

review written by Asni - contact me

imdb listing for this movie

last updated: 17 August, 2006