The winner of the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and, along with director Rolf de Heer, the recipient of overwhelming acclaim at the 2006 Australian Academy Awards, the reigning champion of Australian aborigine films “Ten Canoes” takes the audience on an unmatched trip through times ancient and current.
The setting for this unforgettable experience is the Arafura Swamp of Northern Australia, in the town of Ramingining in the hoary and secretive forests of Arnhamland, a thousand years ago, long before contact with the outside world.
The film is a story within a story about forbidden love and, as the western world would say, boundaries. To be more specific, it is a story told in current terms about a story told a thousand years ago about a verbal legend dating back to the beginning of time.
Native people had lived in the region for time immemorial and had developed their own precise and comprehensive set of social rules and protocols. A young man, just old enough to consider taking a wife, had a crush on one of another man’s three wives. Such a union would have been a severe violation of tribal law and could have caused a grave rift in the social fabric of the closely knit familial units. The young man’s older brother decided to tell him a story about such a situation that happened a long time previous, such that the less experienced man would pause and reconsider his actions.
What follows is the recounting of an ancient, verbal legend passed down through countless generations. The legend concerns a young man who covets one of his brother’s three wives. The legend includes visits by sorcerers, mysterious disappearances, mistaken conclusions, wrongful death and the eventual fulfilling of a wish that the maker comes to dread---all of which is told on screen with perfect costumes, props and scenery. The legend is an allegory of how man’s emotions can cause grave consequences that reverberate out of control and consume their origin.
It is a universal story that appears in western mythology and, of course, in modern western novels, films and theatre. It is a universal story that is all the more profound coming from a perspective both ancient and foreign. It is a story that validates itself through this retelling.
The legend is recounted in the context of a canoe trip taken by ten men. The canoe trip is happening some thousand years ago, more or less, back far enough to be “pre-contact,” when tribal law was pure. The canoe trip is for the purpose of gathering goose eggs, a tradition so old its origins are lost in history; seemingly as old as the tribe itself.
The men on the trip are from two different settlements. Their relaxed, lackadaisical demeanor shades the profound social demarcations that govern their social relations and, eventually, their weddings and procreation. They are whimsical, sexual, crude, savage, childlike and disciplined at the same time.
It is the first such journey for the young man with the crush on the other’s wife. While the viewer is given the sumptuous treat of following the group through the mysterious swamps they are also treated to a fascinating reenactment of the ancient craft of building canoes of bark. It is hard to say which is the more fascinating, the canoe building or the legend of man’s transgressions.
The story is narrated by David Gulpilil, the lead of the Australian aborigine classic “Walkabout” for which director Nicolas Roeg received a nomination for the Cannes Golden Palm. If director de Heer is to be congratulated for this tremendous accomplishment, cinematographer Ian Jones deserves fully half the credit.
As Gulpilil narrates the story in his incredibly soft and able voice, Jones takes us on a nearly impossible photographic journey beneath hanging vines where the magical interface of land, sky and water join to form a nearly impenetrable swamp forest.
The wildlife is as unbelievable as the ageless process the men use to make their canoes. The entire process is one of male bonding and survival at the same time. The natural attitude of the men and their varying ages speaks of tradition and the vagaries of human behavior.
There never was a better look at ourselves.
Ten Canoes
Release: June 1, 2007. MPAA: Not Rated
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