TEN CANOES

Directed by Rolf de Heer
Screenplay by Rolf de Heer, in consultation with the people of Ramingining
Starring Crusoe Kurddal, Jamie Gulpilil, David Gulpilil, Richard Birrinbirrin, Peter Minygululu, Frances Djulibing

Reviewed by Matthew C. Brown
September 82006

Ten Canoes is a beautiful and eliptical bit of oral history that has been faithfully, magically translated to the silver screen. The story takes place in three different time periods, darting back and forth like a snake through the long grass, but fear not; these are not latter-day stylistic gymnastics, but rather the nature of the thing itself. This long, rambling story about the ancient Aboriginals could only be told by framing it in a somewhat-less-ancient tale of Aboriginals a thousand years ago, and that could only be framed in the narrator's own experience, bringing it to us today. There's meaning in that medium: if you can't link these threads to now, what good are they?

The story is told in English by the narrator, in a voice that sounds as warm as a cracked mud flat and as rich as the frothy mire at the bottom of the great river. Other than the narration, the film employs no English at all. All diegetic dialogue is spoken in Ramingining, with no subtitles, which in itself is a truly gorgeous trick. With the narrator's assured help, it doesn't take long for us to catch the gist of the story; by the halfway point of the film, even when the narrator abandons us - which he frequently does, for several minutes at a time - we begin to imagine that we are following along with the incomprehensible speech, understanding its meaning, and more importantly, its possibilities. It seems like such a simple idea, but the language barrier really does allow Ten Canoes to suggest its meaning with a subtlety and do-it-yourselfness that few other films can match.

The storylines are tied together by a common actor, Jamie Gulpilil, who plays lead characters in both of the past timelines. This also helps us identify, as does the simple sense-pleasure of this gorgeous cinematography: like an easygoing hike through the brush on a warm summer's day, the camera in Ten Canoes is wonderfully evocative. Our principal characters are largely nude throughout the film, putting (unintentionally) another canon salvo across the colonial boundary that marks images of these sort as "natural," while similar images of white folk would be "obscene." But this, too, feels natural; everything about Ten Canoes feels natural. It is a lovely enshrining of the classical oral tradition, and the mythic and social value that those old stories can still have. Slow, circular, and wonderfully felt, Ten Canoes is a winner.

Afterword: To my endless disappointment and surprise, I later learned that the subtitle-free status of Ten Canoes was in fact due to a print error at the Toronto International Film Festival and was not the director's intent. I am very curious to see what the subtitled version is like, but I suspect a significant portion of the magic will be lost on me. Still, is it an example of post-colonial racism that I was so willing to accept that I couldn't understand the Aboriginal characters? Would I have been as forgiving if they'd been speaking Dutch?