Ten Canoes

A really fine film. Rolf de Heer (who did the very, very, very different Bad Boy Bubby) here works with Peter Djigirr and the people of Ramingining to shape a story that recounts a distant cultural past and evokes a distant storytelling tradition. The film has two frames: as the camera languorously pans over and through remote Arnhem land in northern Australia, a narrator talks to us of his ancestors and of stories told; we eventually come upon a group of men, making canoes to hunt geese, one of whom begins to tell his younger brother a tale of misplaced love in the distant past; the ‘central’ story is that tale told, in the tale told. (And even in that told, when characters imagine or hypothesize about what has happened or might happen, we get enactments–stories unfolding within the story, within a story.) The film moves back and forth, playing with our expectations (the narrator laughing at our impatience).

It’s never less than gorgeous–the cinematography at times lovingly recreates photographs from an anthropologist (David Thomsen–watch the extras), at times recalls Malick and Ballard and other visionaries of the land, and at times is witty and dryly funny (with, for instance, scenes in the two time frames visually rhyming one another).

But I also just got sucked into its rhythms–and once engrossed I found the film wonderfully entertaining and vivid. Afterwards I looked over the extras about the photographs referenced, and then watched a really fine documentary about the film’s making–de Heer setting out for real collaboration with the village where he filmed, to help recover through reenactment some cultural stories and rituals now mostly forgotten. I found the whole project intriguing–and I’m curious how this anthropological edge slices into–and maybe against–my appreciation of the film’s aesthetic accomplishments. (I’m going to bug a friend of mine who does anthropology and film about his impressions…) What are yours?

I highly recommend this.