Whale Rider (2002)
Director:
Niki Caro
Tagline:
« One young girl dared to confront the past, change the present and determine the future »
Actors:
Paikea
Koro
Nanny Flowers
Porourangi
Uncle Rawiri
Rating:
(44’436 votes)
(44’436 votes)
Quotes:
[first lines]
« Paikea: In the old days, the land felt a great emptiness. It was waiting. Waiting to be filled up. Waiting for someone to love it. Waiting for a leader.
»
[child birth scene]
« Paikea: And he came on the back of a whale. A man to lead a new people. Our ancestor, Paikea. But now we were waiting for the firstborn of the new generation, for the descendant of the whale rider. For the boy who would be chief.
»
« Paikea: There was no gladness when I was born. My twin brother died, and took our mother with him.
»
« Paikea: Maori women have got to stop smoking. We've got to protect our childbearing properties.
»
« Maka: You'd have to be smoking in a pretty funny place to wreck your childbearing properties.
»
[last lines]
« Paikea: My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the whale rider. I'm not a prophet, but I know that our people will keep going forward, all together, with all of our strength.
»
Trailer:
Whale Rider
Runtime:101 minutes
Plots:
A contemporary story of love, rejection and triumph as a young Maori girl fights to fulfill a destiny her grandfather refuses to recognize.
On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their presence there dates back a thousand years or more to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. From then on, Whangara chiefs, always the first-born, always male, have been considered Paikea’s direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand tribe, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai loves Koro more than anyone in the world, but she must fight him and a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.
