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Morris reviews Whale Rider starring Keisha Castle-Hughes and Rawiri Paratene and directed by Niki Caro.

Whale Rider

Produced by John Barnett; directed by Niki Caro; screenply by Niki Caro, based on a novel by Witi lhimaera; cinematography by Leon IMarbey; edited by David Coulson; original music by Lisa Gerrard; production design by Grant Major; costume design by Kristy Cameron; starring Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton, Cliff Curtis and Grant Roa; Color, in English and Maori, 101 tnins. Distributed by Newmarket Films, 202 North Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, phone (310) 858-7472.

The opening scenes of Whale Rider, director Niki Caro's second feature film, make its mythic dimensions clear: whales move through the deep; a woman dies in childbirth; twins are born, but only the female infant survives; a father and son argue bitterly, beginning a decade-long rift. Whale Rider's setting may be contemporary, but the plot points are pure fable. The Maori tribe into which the little girl Pai (Keisha Castle-Hughes) is born claims descent from Paikca, a legendary ancestor who traveled to New Zealand on the back of the whale, and they're waiting for a first-born son to assume tribal leadership.

Based on Witi Ihimaera's 1987 young-adult novel, Whale Rider strips its story down to stark bones, losing much of the original's sentiment and historical context, and giving Pai the narrative voice. This isn't the grandiose topography of Lord of the Rings or the rolling green heartland of many New Zealand films (Scarecrow, Came a hot Friday, Vigil, The Price of Milk). Filming in Whangaro, an isolated spot on the east coast of the North Island, Caro and cinematographer Leon Narbey distil! the beach location to its sun-rinsed essence-dull green flax, bare brown legs, bleached driftwood, pale skies. Like Christine Jeffs recent film, Rain, an adaptation of another atmospheric New Zealand novel, Whale Rider's drama is confined to a rim of beach, its characters restless as the sea. In these films, like Jane Campion's The Piano, New Zealand is a country at the edge of things; the beach is its iconic point of entry and departure, a place where people are abandoned or disappear forever, a place where things wash up.

A grave Rawiri Paratene plays Pai's grandfather, Koro, as a forbidding, old-school patriarch, hard as corrugated iron. Koro is in perpetual mourning for a lost tradition, for his diminished community. Oppressed by his father's expectations, Pai's father Porourangi (Cliff Curtis) "went away-everybody did," as her plaintive voice-over tells us. His unfinished waka-a carved ceremonial canoe-sits waiting on high ground, an emblem of the heritage he's left behind, and a constant reminder to Koro of the tribe's unfinished business.

Whangaro is a community frozen in time, waiting to be saved. Despite the grand sweep of its central story, Whale Rider gives us clear-eyed glimpses of rural Maori society, from the old women smoking and playing cards, to the local kids in their American-branded T-shirts, kicking their heels until they're old enough to leave, their fathers a lost generation of drop-outs, prisoners, and gang members. Success as well as failure undermines the community. Porourangi returns in a big SUV, booming urban music from its stereo, trappings of the more affluent life that draws rural Maori to the cities; he's become an artist and joined the middle class. Koro, of course, despises this new manifestation of his son's talent, displayed in a disastrous slide show in the living room. he sees Porourangi's work as souvenirs, stripped of meaning.

Before Pai leaves with her father, Koro rides her around in circles on the handlebars of his bicycle: his world is getting smaller, looking inward. When his after-school class of wannabe warriors fail to meet his expectations that a leader will emerge, Koro takes to his bed, bitter and disappointed. To Koro, history is a burden, to be borne and passed on. To Pai, history is alive, calling to her from the ocean. Her determined face tells us that she's Koro's true heir, but, to him, this is as unthinkable as Porourangi's art work, an affront to his narrow understanding of tradition.

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A herd of whales strand themselves on the beach, interpreted by Ko m as a horrific portent. As immovable as the beached creatures, he looks like he's made of rock and sand himself. Trying to save the whales draws the community together, but the weary faces on the ragged rescue party suggest a people who have no more to give. Only Pai, who has inherited her ancestor's way with whales, has the power to bring about change by clambering onto a whale's barnacled back and riding it out to sea.

There's endless potential for melodrama here, but the cast, mostly experienced and well-known New Zealand actors, give finely tuned performances, especially Vicky Haughton as Pai's gentle grandmother, and Grant Roa as drop-out uncle Rawiri. The stand-out is newcomer Keisha Castle-Hughes as Pai, using her expressive face and strong, clear voice to convince us of Pai's vision and strength of purpose.

Whale Rider's mythic framework also invites skepticism. After all, one culture's spiritual link to the natural world is another's New Age mysticism; communing with whales is not quite dancing with wolves. Whale Rider has drawn criticism for its earnest inclusion of so much Maori ritual, and this criticism isn't simply motivated by (quite unsurprising) cultural ignorance of a living tradition that happily combines history and legend, the literal and the symbolic. By blending contemporary social realism with the customs and perceptions of a traditional belief system, Whale Rider asks a lot of audiences for whom talk of destiny, tragedy, and legend is usually restricted to fantasy action films, mock-medieval or comic-book epics set in other times, worlds, or galaxies.

Whale Rider, however, isn't a Hollywood film. Like Ihimaera's book, its first audience is comprised of New Zealanders, for whom the genesis, function, and implications of Maori ritual and beliefs in an increasingly Westernized country are highly charged issues, matters of ongoing national debate. Maori became a joint official language in 1987, and the last twenty years have seen a resurgence of interest in maoritanga (Maori culture)-revitalized through Maori-language schools and university courses, as well as contemporary art and literature-including the work of Ihimaera himself, the first Maori to publish a novel. But its place in New Zealand culture remains an uneasy one. To many white New Zealanders, maoritanga is like the British royal family: it has sentimental appeal, but it's more a tourist draw than a potent social force.

America is used to seeing versions of itself-its history, myths, and obsessions-projected on the big screen, but small nations can't afford the luxury of feature films; it took South Pacific Pictures fourteen years (and financial support from the New Zealand government) to bring Whale Rider to the screen. It's been tremendously successful in New Zealand, a country still uncovering its own stories, unraveling its own past. When Koro explains the motivation for a warrior's bulging eyes and unfurled tongue to his class of sullen adolescents, it's not just a sop to a wide-eyed foreign market: he's joining the dots for generations of New Zcalanders familiar with the sight but ignorant of the symbolism. For American audiences accustomed to the mugging and posturing of rap videos, the elements of the haka (war dance) may seem empty and foolish, to which hilarity in U.S. theaters during this scene attests. But Caro's intention isn't to provide local color or light relief. The fact that Koro needs to explain the tradition reveals the tension between ancient and modern at the very heart of the film.

Pai's leap of faith (onto the whale's back) demands a leap of a different kind from us, an audience used to seeing adolescent protagonists overcome familial opposition simply by scoring goals or winning a place in ballet school. Her willingness to face death-to choose it, in fact-is the only way she can prove herself a leader in the tradition of storied ancestors: the whale rider, Paikea, from her grandfather's side, and Muriwai, a legendary female hero, on her grandmother's. Despite the 'girls can do anything' elements of its plot, there's far more at stake in Whale Rider than access to the hoys' club. Like all mythic heroes, Pai is required to perform legendary feats that defy the imagination, not simply to prove her worth as an individual, but to assert her entitlement to leadership, her place in tribal history.

And like the Maori legends New Zealanders learn as children, Whale Rider contains a lesson. It shows how drastic action is necessary to achieve social change, how the responsibility lies with both the individual and the community. Just as Pai is delivered hack to her family by the sea, Maori society needs to be reborn-fresh-faced, determined, and informed. Ihimaera's young-adult novel ends with reassuring family harmony-weeping Nanny, repentant Koru, leaping whales-but the film has a larger scope. Its final scene, in which Porourangi's waka strikes out to sea, Pai and Koru sitting side by side, suggests the beginning of a journey as great as the Pacific voyages of old. The purpose this time isn't to find new land, but to create a new world in the place where they live.

Whatever popular success the film finds in the global village, however 'universal' the appeal of its story, Whale Rider is a profoundly New Zealand film. It issues a challenge to young Maori, who no longer draw their identity from their heritage; and to older Maori, whose rigid guardianship of cultural tradition contains it in the past. It issues a challenge to all New Zealanders, for whom history begins with Abel Tasman or Captain Cook, to find inspiration in the precolonial past and, implicitly, a way forward as a distinctive nation. Whale Rider asks New Zealanders to embrace what is theirs alone. That this message can't survive the movie's journey away from its cultural context into foreign markets does not diminish its significance.-Paula Morris