The Review of Whale Rider

Niki Caro the director of Whale Rider has directed a movie about leadership, determination and courage. This movie is set in New Zealand based on a true story. Keisha Castle-Hughes ( Pai) the main character plays the role of a girl who lives in a society that is sexist.

Keisha ( Pai) shows a tremendous will power to koro, Pai’s Grandfather played by Rawiri Paratene shows a denial against Pai becoming a new leader of the tribe.

This movie is a classic bildungsroman film (growing up) as we see how involved Pai becomes more advanced into the culture and strives hard to become a leader even though she has boundaries to cross. Becoming a leader of a tribe that inherits males was hard to as Pai becoming the next leader, due to her gender and tradition. Example as Pai tries to learn the taiaha it is not easy as this practice is a masculine weapon. This example gives a virtual presentation about Pai and her costume in this scene. She was wearing a t-shirt and a floral skirt as this shows her feminity while using masculine weapon. Pai shows that being a female doesn’t affect her by using a male weapon.

Having to live in a community that is against your gender is going to mentally affect you, Pai shows courage and determination to never give up on becoming the next leader. In one of the scenes, Pai showed bravery when collecting the whalebone as it took endurance to go into the depth of the ocean to get it. The camera angle shows shot at the people in the boat and back to see. They show the peoples emotions while Pai is the water. They zoom in when showing individual faces when Pai is getting the bone.

One of the ways Pai showed leadership was when she decided to not go with her father as she knew she had to become a leader. She felt a connection with the sea. Becoming a leader will come with decision making and Pai has shown that in this scenario. In this scene, they shot the father and Pai from a side angle to incorporate both the people in the car.

A scene where Pai says she is a leader a close up of her grandfather is taken. This is to focus his emotion on Pai’s sayings. In this scene, the music plays a piece of soft and mysterious music as everyone is pulling the whales out. This music piece sets well with a scenario as we being the audience feel calm but wanting to know what is going happen next. This music suites feel of the audience to involve them in the movie. Even though Pai is a girl and going by tradition, she climbs on the whale leaving courage behind. This shot is taken with an overhead shot of Pai riding the whale.

A skill Pai shows throughout the movie is determination. An example is when Pai wants to learn how to use the taiaha she doesn’t give up just because her grandfather won’t teach her and because she is a girl. First, she asks Hemi to teach her and her uncle. We see when Pai sees Hemi said due to his father leaving Hemi gets upset and he starts to fight with the taiaha as he gets shocked on how well Pai is fighting. This shot is wide shot to show the whole fight and zooms in, on Hemi’s face as he was surprised. She didn’t give up on learning the stick, she found other ways on learning it.