Great Scene: “Whale Rider”

The 2003 movie Whale Rider is a wonderful story, aptly described in this IMDB plot summary:

A contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.

The girl in question is Paikea, performed magnificently by Keisha Castle-Hughes in a role for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.

In this scene, many threads come together. Pai has invited her grandfather (another great performance by Rawiri Paratene) as her special guest to a school concert, her way of reaching out to him after he has blamed her for much of what has gone wrong with the local community by virtue of Pai’s birth — as a girl, not a boy who could become a tribal leader — and by Pai’s meddling in the ways of training, again in his mind not her place because of her gender. And yet, Pai still loves her grandfather, the current leader of the village, and font of knowledge about the Maori traditions which Pai has soaked up.

The scene begins with an announcement by Pai’s teacher that the young girl won an award for the speech she is about to give. One layer of subtext is that her grandfather is absent, so part of Pai’s emotional state is influenced by her disappointment. But there is so much going on in this scene, it is a remarkable moment… and a stunning performance by such a young actor… with a dramatic cross-cut to the grandfather making a stunning discovery on the beach.

We need movies like Whale Rider, ones that take us into specific subcultures around the world to educate us about our differences… and remind us of our shared humanity.

[Originally posted May 20, 2014]