Whale Rider

cert PG
2 out of 5 2
Chief-in-waiting: Whale Rider
Whate Rider: Very popular with film socs, apparently

This sentimental crowd-pleaser about a young Maori girl facing her tribal destiny is somewhere between whale music and world music, or maybe a cross between Free Willy and a 90-minute Benetton ad.

  1. Whale Rider
  2. Production year: 2003
  3. Country: Rest of the world
  4. Cert (UK): PG
  5. Runtime: 101 mins
  6. Directors: Niki Caro
  7. Cast: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Rawiri Paratene, Vicky Haughton
  8. More on this film

It's set in a remote, and beautifully photographed New Zealand coastal town where Maori elder Koro (Rawiri Paratene) is chief of a clan claiming descent from the legendary Whale Rider. When his son's wife dies in childbirth with twins, only the girl, Paikea, survives; and her traumatised father runs off to be an artist in Europe without embracing his responsibilities.

Koro brings up his granddaughter himself but inwardly resents the lack of a male descendant and gloweringly refuses to accept the obvious - that Paikea is the natural inheritor of his mantle.

There's a charmingly unaffected performance from non-professional Keisha Castle-Hughes as Paikea, and everything is earnestly and sincerely meant. But there is something very touchy-feely about the whole thing.

Koro instructs the young Maoris in their culture and history, including the warrior tribal dances which are intended to face down their "enemies" - but do they have any enemies? The Anglos who dispossessed them? They don't feature in the movie, and it's not clear exactly how seriously we are supposed to take their fiercely warlike sense of identity in the modern world, or what precisely is at stake if Koro dies without accepting Paikea as his heir.

It all looks like a piece of picturesque, risk-free ethnography for an undemanding teen/family audience.

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