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Ebert Likes Whale Movies Because He's Fat
(Thank You, Gene Siskel)
The arthouse summer of 2003 was marked by two "inspiring"
stories of young girls casting off the shackles of patriarchy
to emerge fresh and enlightened into the world. One of these
movies is actually inspiring; the other is soccer's answer
to My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Bend It Like Beckham
takes literally those "Soccer Is Life. Everything
Else Is Just Details" shirts, whereas Whale Rider
considers the painful assimilation of centuries of tradition
into a woman's liberation. Beckham's cultural study
involves the little girl asking a painting above the fireplace
for guidance; Whale Rider's cultural inquiry involves
centuries of ritual being passed to a dying breed.
Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes) is a Maori girl who lives with
her grandparents Koro and Nanni. Koro is a traditional Maori
patriarch, a grandfather of the violent men in Lee Tamahori's
first feature Once Were Warriors. As in that film,
the dove emerging from the fiery violence is a gifted girl.
In her consignment to womanly duties, she avoids the infection
of violence until it spills over into the entire family. Once
Were Warriors centers on a young family of ghettoized
Maori, whereas Whale Rider is a gentler film, concentrating
less on domestic violence and more on how the centuries of
oppression have become less synchronized with the modern world.
Koro picks up Pai from school on his bicycle, the wind blowing
their hair as the old man and the young girl speed home along
the ocean front. But, Pai is approaching the age of passage,
which means that her grandfather's attention will turn to
the serious work of preparing the boys for Maori manhood.
Complicating matters is Pai's father, Porourangi (Cliff Curtis),
who comes back for a visit. He's not a kendo stick kind of
guy, so he left to pursue a career as an artist in France.
Porourangi's good, of course, but this impresses Koro very
little. Porourangi, Koro's eldest son, should have been the
dwindling tribe's leader, their new Moses, but in his absence,
the weight has fallen to the shoulders of Rawiri, whose eighty
extra pounds make it difficult to lead the people. Koro's
aggravation also weighs on his wife Nanny, who must choose
her moments very wisely, as if she's try to keep the lid on
a boiling pot.
All of this sets up over an hour's worth of family drama,
which might have been tedious, if not for a literate screenplay
by Niki Caro. I won't give away too much more of the story,
except to say that the script invites us into this (to the
American audience) distant culture. We feel the honor of the
code and the weight of its impending death—a weight so
heavy, in fact, that it's symbolized by beached whales. This
sort of thing can be very obvious (like Jess falling in love
with her soccer coach), but Caro screenplay provides enough
dialogue to give each character a voice, yet provides enough
space to allow the actors to fill in the character, and to
use the natural surroundings to round out the theme. We understand
what Caro means when we see a legion of beached whales plopped
in the sand, framed by a slate-grey sky, with the sounds of
the waves mixing with whale lowing. The wind blows a lot in
this movies, as if the spirit of people soars with it—very
poetic, as opposed to Beckham's choppy, poorly framed
soccer scenes. There's no rock-themed montages, just the grace
of kendo fighting, scored by the thwack of sticks and the
whoosh of the air.
The climactic scene is virtually wordless, unlike Beckham's
Vardolos-inspired earnest speeches. The action ties together—like
the rope Koro uses to describe the Maori people—each
different subplot. The main event, of course, Pai's spirit
breaking free to heal the wounded people; there's great poetry
in Pai's treating of whale scars and her ocean journey. Her
destiny makes sense: Only a woman could heel the scars men
have left on woman—both figuratively and literally, as
Once Were Warriors tells us. The film feels as epic
as it should: Whale Rider is about female liberation
as the healing and survival of an ancient people; Bend
It Like Beckham is about liberating oneself to join WUSA's
San Jose Cyberays. You be the judge.
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