Get away ... Ten Canoes
There is the sneaking suspicion that Rolf de Heer's collaboration with the Australian Aborigine tribes of the Northern Territory could easily represent a celluloid case of the Emperor's New Clothes. Who, after all, is going to give a poor review to a film which sets out from the start to divest itself of any attachment to Hollywood notions of structure and narrative, and which represents the first time that the continent's indigenous peoples have been seen on film in a context which has nothing to do with whites?
But perhaps we're being overly cynical. What is certain is that the multi-layered tale has been a huge hit with the critics, who are literally falling over themselves to heap praise on it.
"It's a hypnotically slow-burning, magical piece of film-making, the spell occasionally disrupted by disarmingly ribald humour," writes Wendy Ide in The Times, while Empire Sam Toy muses on the movie's "engaging story" and "pervasive sense of warmth".
Despite the somewhat worthy subject matter, Variety's Richard Kuipers insists "while respect and understanding are uppermost, there's nothing precious about Ten Canoes".
But our own Peter Bradshaw is prepared to rock the boat a little. "What unfolds here on screen is so gently and obliquely laid out that I have to admit my attention very occasionally wandered, and I even suspected that bush spirits were silently attaching tiny weights to each of my eyelashes," he writes, before backtracking: "Regular moments of enchantment removed them."
Have you seen the film? Did you find it ponderous and confusing? Or was it a welcome escape from Hollywood film-making convention? Let us know below.
