The Word Cloud

Many apologies for the lack of blogs recently but I have been madly writing to a deadline by night and hanging women's clothes by day.

And my return to the Adventures in 20th Century cinema has one major flaw; the film Ten Canoes was made in 2006, so not technically 20th century. On the other hand my pledge to introduce people to films that they might not have seen which are truly 'something different' is more than fulfilled; Ten Canoes is like nothing I've ever seen.

One slight problem, I saw this film in the cinema when it came out, I have not seen it since. On the other hand it made a huge impression and so, with a little help from IMDB (if only to assist in the spelling of names), I think I can do this.

Fist up, this is an aboriginee film, a rare beast to start with, though it is narrated in English by prominent arboriginal actor, David Gulpilil. The  ten canoes refer to stories and there are many interwoven stories in this film (10 I suppose, although I didn't count). Technically it is not a portmanteau film because each story leads into the next, it is in a way a story about telling stories. Gulpilil's storyteller begins telling a story in which the characters themselves tell others. That in itself is enough to make this a pretty unique film.

The next thing that contributes to the film's uniqueness is it's aboriginal setting. this film is set centuries ago and doesn't come close to what we call 'civilisation', it is a completely isolated world, and frankly is more alien to us in the West than most fantasy and sci-fi. I said something similar I think about Kwaidan and it was true but this is a whole other step up from that. But, despite all the strangeness, the customs and beliefs that I know nothing about, I never found the film hard to follow, characters motivations remained obvious despite their curiosity.

These are old stories and the great thing about old stories is that there is a reason they have survived; they're good. They are funny, sad, dramatic and bloody. It is impossible not to get caught up in the lives of Yeeralparil and Ridjimiraril, even though those lives are as strange to us as their names. AS befits a story that is about storytelling, the film's own storytelling is exemplary; clear, dramatic, intriguing.

The film is shot with a documentary realism, by which I do not mean the camera is forever bobbing up and down and zooming in and out for reasons passing understanding, but that one never catches these actors acting. Even now I find it almost impossible to beleive that these people do not live out in the outback building canoes from bark and hunting goose eggs in the swamp. they are completely convincing.

For anyone who likes their films a little off the wall then I would highly recomend Ten Canoes. For those who would rather die than read a subtitle and think that Batman Begins is a as good as cinema gets, I'd recomend it even more highly, not because I think they should expand their horizons (though I do) but becuase this is every bit as thrilling a film. Ten Canoes is the sort of film because of which I started writing this blog, to prove that , although you might think you've seen it all before, you absolutely haven't.