Whale Rider DVD Review

"WHALE RIDER" reviews

DVD

WHALE RIDER

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2005-10-26 11:18:14

Provider

MRIB

DVD Review

At first glance a film about the patriarchal structure within a Maori tribe may not seem like a real crowd pleaser, Whale Rider may just change your mind.

The film opens just over a decade ago when a mother dies while delivering her twins. The baby son dies too but a daughter Pai survives. Her heartbroken father Porourangi though can't bear to remain in New Zealand and abandons his tribe and child to start a new life in Europe, leaving Pai to be raised by her grandparents. This presents a problem though as Porourangi is the rightful heir to the tribe and tradition dictates that a girl can't lead. Skip forward a dozen years and what follows is Pai's (Keisha Castle-Hughes) quest to try and convince her grandfather, Koro (Rawiri Paratene), that she is worthy of taking over from him.

While it would be easy to dismiss Whale Rider as a female rites-of-passage movie, it is so much more. It is an uplifting vision that tries to show us that, when it comes to tradition, change isn't the nightmare situation that most would imagine it to be.

Writer / director Niki Caro has taken great care to make sure the film is reflective of the culture, hiring Maori advisors and extras, and the final package gives much more a positive spin to this indigenous people's future than Lee Tamahori's 1994 movie Once Were Warriors.

Copyright © MRIB 2005.