"The power to change, the strength to heal" is the catch phrase for the new film from Tusi Tamasese about family connections, redemption and starting anew. The father of a deeply troubled household that endured tragedy both from without and within, seeks to reconcile with his youngest daughter by making a journey to both symbolically and culturally lay the family "ghosts" to rest. Written by Red Haircrow
One Thousand Ropes
'One Thousand Ropes': Film Review | Berlin 2017
Childbirth becomes a powerful vessel for renewal in this deeply felt drama about a Samoan former fighter atoning for the violence that divided his family and exiled him to solitude.
There's a scene early in Samoan New Zealander Tusi Tamasese's One Thousand Ropes in which the central character, a male midwife, assists a young woman in natural childbirth while a cartoon blares from a television in the room, depicting the story of a Polynesian demigod who snares the sun to slow its path, granting longer hours of daylight. That seemingly casual connection between life and mythology, between flesh-and-blood reality and its parallel spiritual dimensions, informs this meditative drama about the redemption of a man whose healing hands have also inflicted scars on his family.
World-premiering with a special slot in Berlin's Panorama section, the Samoan- and English-language film should find further exposure in festivals and programming forums with an interest in ethnographic drama. While Tamasese pushes the enigmatic solemnity to a fault, he sustains the subdued intensity with impressive control, building to a hopeful conclusion that resonates in the contained performance of Uelese Petaia as Maea, a former fighter once known as "The Lion." Maea has renounced violence for a simple, peaceful life that remains plagued by the heavy burdens of his past.
The opening images convey the extreme tenderness of Maea — a heavy-set, middle-aged man with a taciturn, unsmiling demeanor — as he swaddles a newborn infant and coaxes the unhappy young mother to bond with her child. He buries the placentas of his clients under a lemon tree, using the juice from its fruit to massage their stomachs during the late stages of pregnancy, suggesting a chain in which each new life feeds those that follow. And he resists the invitation of other practitioners to share his traditional healing techniques with modern childbirth professionals.
Only gradually — and indirectly — do we learn how different Maea was in the past. His abusive behavior toward his late wife brought about the estrangement of his family, their absence represented by faded squares in the paintwork where photographs once hung on the walls of his lonely home in Lower Hutt, Wellington. The culture of male violence is all around him, in a drunken neighbor constantly spoiling for a fight, or in the hostility between his colleagues at the bakery where he also works, preparing dough with the same gentle patience he brings to his midwifery.
Tamasese folds a minor-key ghost story into this portrait of regret, solitude and atonement via Seipua (Vaele Sima Urale), the taunting spirit of a dead woman clinging to life. A volatile presence with a forehead marked by bleeding wounds, she lurks in a corner of Maea's house. Haunting his dreams and threatening to invade the wombs of his patients in order to return to the living, she warns him not to underestimate her.
When Maea's youngest daughter, Ilisa (Frankie Adams), turns up pregnant and badly beaten by her boyfriend, she's unsettled by Seipua, but her father says the spirit keeps him company. Ilisa refuses to tell him the name of the baby's father. But even when he learns the man's whereabouts, Maea struggles against his own instincts, as well as his male peers in the community, urging him to dole out punishment. There's a stirring sense of humility in his efforts to defy the ingrained codes of violence and bring his granddaughter into a world of harmony and reconciliation.
From Leon Narbey's composed camerawork with its minimal, graceful movement, to the pensive scoring of Tim Prebble, incorporating sounds of nature, this slow-moving film keeps its conflicts veiled, making the audience work to access the characters' inner lives. It combines melancholy domestic drama with spiritual and supernatural elements, and while the latter could have been more robustly developed, a quiet power accumulates nonetheless. Maea's hands become a moving symbol of the old man's efforts to redefine his place in the world and seek forgiveness through his daughter.
孩子的出生变成了一个有力的调和的工具。电影讲述的是一个萨摩安人原来用暴力对待家庭，试图和家庭和女儿调解的故事。
当人老了，妻子被自己打的去世了，孩子因为曾经的家庭暴力关系很不和谐，那到底怎么办。电影中若干场景主角孤独坐在窗户边上，孤独去柠檬树下捡柠檬，夜晚被噩梦惊醒，剪指甲的场景也出现好多次。
全片对话不多，也几乎没有什么故事情节发展的高潮（所以我看着睡着了）。一个孤独老人面对老年的忧郁。
每个人好像都很孤立，经常出现通过打架解决问题的场面。没有特别多的欢笑，也没有特别多的嬉闹。
