Beyond the Multiplex

"Ten Canoes": From the deep past, an Aussie tale of murder and punishment, plus dick jokes
I didn't catch Australian director Rolf de Heer's "Ten Canoes" last year at Cannes, where it won a special jury prize. Finally acquired by Palm Pictures, it will now trickle out gradually to American screens. This is the first feature film ever made in an Australian aboriginal language -- the language of the Yolngu people, from Arnhem Land in the remote Northern Territory -- and belongs to the semi-anthropological moviemaking tradition of Zacharias Kunuk's "The Fast Runner," an art-house hit in 2002.

Shot in glorious widescreen by cinematographer Ian Jones, "Ten Canoes" offers unforgettable panoramas of the swamps and temperate forests of Arnhem Land, which are entirely different landscapes from the stereotypical Outback deserts so often seen in Australian film. This isn't a movie for the impatient; it includes a story within a story within a story, the outermost one being narrated by legendary aboriginal actor-storyteller David Gulpilil. De Heer's actors, all recruited from the small aboriginal community of Ramingining, are relatively inexpressive by conventional cinema standards, and what plot there is to the film jerks forward in little quantum leaps.

What de Heer, Gulpilil and co-director Peter Djigirr have tried to accomplish is a blending of the discursive, long-winded and allegorical aboriginal storytelling tradition with the 90-minute, three-act structure of movies. I'm not sure "Ten Canoes" is absolutely successful on that front, but it's a fascinating immersion within a highly ritualized Stone Age oral culture that, at least according to tradition, existed almost unchanged for thousands of years before the European arrival.

Gulpilil's story is set during the time of "the ancestors," perhaps a thousand years ago, when a young man named Dayindi (Jamie Gulpilil, son of David) is being taken on his first goose-hunting expedition. His older brother Minygululu (Peter Minygululu) learns that Dayindi covets his third and youngest wife, and decides to tell his own story, designed to discourage adultery. That story goes back even deeper into the past, not long "after the great flood covered the land," and recounts the mythological Cain-and-Abel history of another pair of brothers in which the younger wanted one of the older one's wives.

Got all that? OK, you don't really have to. "Ten Canoes" will hold your interest if you give it time, largely on the basis of that lush and lovely scenery, even if you can't entirely follow the nested narratives or grasp their intended meaning. The innermost tale finally builds up some steam: There's a mysterious stranger, a missing wife, an accidental killing, and a deadly revenge ceremony. There's comic relief in the person of Birrinbirrin (Richard Birrinbirrin), a big-bellied Winnie-the-Pooh type who's always trying to convince others to gather honey for him. (There are even fart jokes, and dick-size jokes.) As in "The Fast Runner," it can be easy to forget that the aboriginal actors in "Ten Canoes" are modern people who drive 4-by-4's and hunt with shotguns; their re-creation of a lifestyle that disappeared more than a century ago feels completely authentic, never forced or sanctimonious.

You have the sense that de Heer is playing to two audiences: first and perhaps foremost, his Ramingining collaborators, who helped create this movie as a kind of community memorial; and secondly, the international film market. It's a balancing act almost as difficult as the traditional Death Dance an aboriginal warrior performed when he knew the end was near. "Ten Canoes" emphasizes both essential human commonality and the distinctive sacred traditions of a long-oppressed culture. As with "The Fast Runner," the individual work may be less important than the new cinematic possibilities it opens.

"Ten Canoes" opens June 1 at Cinema Village in New York, with a national rollout to follow.

Fast forward: Jet-lag timeout
Beyond the Multiplex world HQ will be shuttered next week, as I recover from overdoses of sunscreen, rosé, Romanian cinema and general fabulousness. In the overload of early summer releases, don't miss Marion Cotillard's extraordinary physical performance as French chanteuse Edith Piaf in Olivier Dahan's messy, awkward but often impressive biopic "La Vie en Rose." (In French it's "La Môme," an untranslatable nickname.) Even better is Adrian Shergold's true-life drama "Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman," starring the terrific Timothy Spall as a semi-legendary executioner who sent 450 convicts to their reward in the years before Britain banned the death penalty. Both films will open June 8 in major cities, with wider releases to follow. I'll be back June 14.

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