TANNA C
Australia
Vanuatu (100 mi) 2015
d: Martin Butler and Bentley Dean
Rather elementary ethnographical filmmaking, where good
intentions unfortunately do not produce great art. What might have made a terrific documentary is
instead converted into a fictional film by a couple of documentary filmmakers
with rather pedestrian results. While
the film takes place in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu, a volcanic
archipelago of islands located about a thousand miles northeast of Australia,
the cast is comprised entirely from indigenous members of the local Yakel
tribe, where the story is told in mythical status, though it’s based on actual
events. The film perpetuates the same Western
stereotypes since the era of King
Kong (1933) by treating indigenous nations like some exotic allure, where
there’s little attempt to go into complex detail, or provide anything resembling
a character study, instead the film provides a threadbare sketch of indigenous
life on the island, where we observe fairly predictable social customs in an
otherworldly locale. Unlike Warwick
Thornton’s 2010
Top Ten Films of the Year: #8 Samson and Delilah, which actually gets under
the skin of indigenous people, this is all surface textures, where it’s clear
the filmmakers don’t have the requisite skills to make a more challenging
film. While the filmmakers apparently
spent seven months with the Yakel tribe, there’s little recognition for their
rhythm of life or observing their customary rituals, for instance learning how
they hunt and produce food, build their homes, heal their sick, pray to
spiritual deities, designing something other than a mythological fable might
have felt more authentic and sincere, as living in the tropical forests and the
element of survival would become paramount, where the audience could develop an
invested interest. Here there’s a huge
gulf between the audience and the subject matter, with little bridging the
gap.
The dark-skinned villagers from the island of Tanna live
without electricity, wearing grass skirts, collecting water from nearby
streams, finding food and making their homes from whatever they find in the
forest, where they practice ancient customs known as Kastom. Their hierarchy includes an elderly chief and
a medicine man, with men doing the hunting and women doing the washing and
making what little clothes they use, where they practice arranged marriages
with outside tribes in order to avoid tribal wars. Right away we sense some friction, as there
is an existing romance secretly happening within the same tribe between Wawa
(Marie Wawa) and Dain (Mungau Dain), the grandson of the tribe’s chief. Apparently one of them left the village for
awhile, and what was once childhood friendship blossomed into something more,
where most of this is seen through the eyes of a rebellious young child, Selin (Marceline
Rofit), Wawa’s younger sister who has a habit of listening to no one and simply
doing as she pleases. When it’s
discovered that she routinely travels into the territory of a neighboring tribe
known as the Imedin, she is chastised and warned of dire consequences, as she
could be killed. Undaunted by the
warnings, she continues to go where she pleases, so her grandfather (Albi
Nangia), an elder shaman, decides a spiritual lesson is in order, walking the child
to the rim of an active island volcano, known as Yahul, the spirit mother of
their tribe, where it is revealed to be a wrathful and protective force, seen
gurgling in red-hot embers, continually blowing off steam. Selim feels the power of Yahul for the first
time as they sit on the rim edge, but they are interrupted by members of the
Imedin tribe who horrifically beat her grandfather, believing he has used his
powers as a medicine man to hex their land, where Selim escapes and runs all
the way back home crying for help. This
incident causes villagers to panic, claiming they are losing their people, as
apparently Dain lost his mother and father to the Imedin.
This ruckus creates a ceremonial meeting between tribal
chiefs (playing themselves), Yakel Chief Charlie Kahla and Imedin Chief Mikum
Tainakou, in an attempt to lower the levels of hostility, “to bury the club,”
where it is decreed that violence will subsist when an Imedin warrior is
allowed to marry Wawa. She fears a fate
with another tribe and is instead in love with Dain, but their romance is
forbidden, so they run away into the heart of the forest and try to survive on
their own, but they are continually viewed as trespassers on someone else’s
land. Nonetheless, they lead an idyllic
existence on the ocean shores, taking shelter in the tropical cover, where they
manage to survive on their own in the lush foliage and hidden streams, choosing
not to join the wayward Christian settlement that welcomes them with open arms,
as both find them too peculiar, preferring to live on their own. But the Imedin are incensed that Wawa has
refused, sending out a team of warriors to find her and bring her back,
plotting to kill Dain on sight. The
Yakel send out their own warriors in hopes of finding them first, while Selin,
the little rabble rouser, runs off to help as well. This choreography of mixed messages and
confusion only serves to prolong the inevitable, as the island is too small to
avoid detection. It all comes to a head
on the rim of the volcano, with spewing lava and gaseous fumes as a backdrop,
as the young couple are found dead in each other’s arms, having eaten poisonous
mushrooms. An African folk tale merging
into the forbidden lovers Romeo and
Juliet, it’s left for Chief Charlie to meditate on the outcome, producing a
song of sorrow that he sings to his tribe announcing no more arranged
marriages, that women are now free to pick who they choose in marriage. Supposedly based on an actual event, there is
no mention of why a policy of arranged marriage existed in the first place,
which guaranteed marrying outside one’s tribe, as that likely prevented incest
from occurring throughout the generations.
In small tribes, more likely than not, nearly everyone is related, where
marrying within the tribe could have severe medical consequences. The film omits this likelihood in its zealous
urge to portray a mythical romance where love is stronger than tradition, but
tradition is what allowed them to survive as a tribe all these years. That notwithstanding, the film is Australia’s
nomination for Best Foreign Film and has made the next-to-last cut into the
final nine films, eventually whittled down to only five.
