Could anybody tell what George Baines, Alisdair Stewart, et. al. did to make their daily bread? I know this is sort of a "chick flick", and as my wife tells me it's not really important, but it sort of frustrated me that nobody seemed to work for a living.
shareI would argue that it is by no means a chick flick. It was a dark, silent, artistic movie that would bore the life out of someone who only likes chick flicks (I watched it with my chick flick lovin friend and she fell asleep twenty minutes into it).
I believe Alisdair bought and sold land, and probably did some more trading/farming on the side. George worked for him as his interpreter and made some living by those means, he also owned land (which he traded in for the piano). A lot of the settlers in New Zealand also had money from Britain that they brought over to establish new lives in the colonies.
Eagles may soar but weasels never get sucked into jet engines
"chick flick" was probably not the right term. But I think this movie appeals to women a little more than men, although I liked it very much. What I couldn't get out of it was a sense of community. Everybody seemed isolated and I never saw anyone "doing" anything.
shareThe British imports on Maori land were trying to make a go of it with hardscrabble farming...hence all the tea cups and lace in a sea of mud. No roads, no towns - the community you seek was beheld in their homespun production of Bluebeard. We see Alisdair coming and going a couple of times, not only to give Ada the chance to hook up with Baines but presumably to tend to some landowner business - remember he hauls out the guns to trade with at one point? And when Ada and Flora show up on Baines' doorstep to be taken to the piano (as soon as Alisdair is off on his business), he tells them he can't, he doesn't have time. He's saddling up a horse to go off somewhere himself and the two just wait it out until he crumbles. At one point, both of their heads are tilted in the same direction - they reminded me of birds for some reason. Adorable how they echoed one another as mother and daughter.
How about the Maori's reaction to Bluebeard? I absolutely loved that device. What could have more effectively conveyed the disparity in cultures?
And to all of you on this board who have said that this movie was a waste of your time, Holly Hunter sucked, Harvey Keitel was miscast, the nudity was a misplaced obscenity - I wonder, however do you get through your uninformed, uptight, narrow little lives?
This movie made me rejoice in my humanity!
Why wish for the moon when we can have the stars?
Well, that was interesting. There sure wasn't much evidence of farming around the place they lived. And what the heck was Harvey doing? I know it's a guy thing, but I have a hard time identifying with the men unless I know how they make their daily bread.
shareOh yea, only men could be concerned with how the big strong men provide for the poor, helpless women and children. It's 2008. Women have been earning "daily bread" for their families for decades.
Maybe you could find a different way of identifying with the men in this film if not enough information is given about their occupations. Just as women are more than incubators and maids, men are more than workhorses. The men in this film experience complex character development and deep-rooted, complicated emotions. Surely you're familiar with the feelings of love, jealousy, frustration, desire, etc... There are several ways you can try to identify with them.
Ok, but men are shaped to a large degree by what they do to get by, as are women. I could see pretty much what the women did, I couldn't see what shaped the men's character. I could identify with the feelings of "love, jealousy, frustration, desire, etc...", but that is more what women identify with, hence my original judgment that this was a "chick flick". But I did think it was an entertaining movie, (my wife enjoyed it more however).
shareReally? A "chick flick"?
Word of advise, if you want everyone to see how conformed you are by the constraints that society puts on us, carry on like this.
How BORING!!! you can only identify with someone because of what their "job" is? I think you need to read Marx's work on the "commodity fetish", it might give you some perspective on the way in which you value people not for who they are as complex beings, but for the monetary value they can accumulate.
Shouldn't it be enough to identify with that this man is obviously valued for his translation abilities and the way he can work with people in 1850 colonial times. And by the way...that's what they were "professionally"...colonists. Job occupation: exploit the indigenous people and the landscape.
If you are so gendered by your Calivinist views of the world, then why admit that you actually listen to your wife's opinion? I mean, is she not just a host of irrational, over-emotional feelings? Could you not identify with the lust, with the sense of precariousness, or is that soley reserved to the realm of "woman" too?
Maybe your wife enjoyed it more because she has better taste, not because she's a woman. Maybe you should stop living your life in stereotypes and then you will not feel a Freudian tension between your over-wrought sense of convention and your experience of brilliant movies like this one.
Whoa!! You need to get out more. It's movie, not a way of life. I enjoyed the movie but wow! I was just a little curious about how they made a living. Like my wife said: "Full frontal nudity of Harvey Keitel, what more do you need?" You really take yourself to serious ma'am.
shareSure...belittle me...that's the way...
I get out plently, and I was not commenting on the movie, I was commenting on the kind of language you use. In a movie like this, that's all you can be curious about and identify with? You make it sound as if there is nothing happening or nothing worthwhile being done if they are not making money from it. If it is obvious that they are colonisers, then surely that is their "way of life" and 'what they do for living/a living?
The kind of "making a living" you seem to be talking about is just completely out of the time-frame and context of this movie and I was baffled about why you would care...unless of course that was the criteria you use to interpellate other people.
Forgive me being serious...but hell...rather that than frivilous...or just plain boring...sir...
"If distracting effects are ascribed to serious talk, distraction must be a deadly serious matter."- Siegfried Kracauer
I bet you are a lot of fun on a date.
shareYou'll never know...
And don't worry, I am choose very well the people I like to associate with. They tend to be interesting and engaged human-beings who challenge me.
Did I hear any one say evasion? over-compensation? resorting to conformatism?
Would you like it better if I giggled and tossed my hair?
Go make a living and be a productive member of society...seems to be all you're good for.
Ok.
shareNow that the flaming has died down... I hope that I won't piss too many off.
During the mid-nineteenth century New Zealand was part of the British Empire, changing slowly from a privileged aristocracy. A land grab from the natives (and a dodge to avoid French claims) was rampant.
As part of the British Empire, much of the aristocracy didn't do to a lot "making a living". Profitable decision making was largely a result of birth, privileged education and/or hard work. If you had ambition, you grabbed land as quick as you could. If you didn't have education or backing, the grab went slower. Obviously, Stewart is building fences, burning forests, eroding the land and making a lot of mud. He is working his ass off to use and exploit as much as he can... perhaps with some help from "Daddy". This helps explain his early attitude about his purchased slave wife, one of the "dumb creatures" who is disappointingly weak.
The only other male colonist is the other end of the spectrum. Baines has started with limited education but has the smarts to see that land is what it is about. Unlike Stewart, Baines is working with the natives rather than using them as slaves. But life in a verdant land can be easy, especially if your goals are easily satisfied. But Ada introduces a reason for this smart, uneducated man to reach out and achieve more. But, unlike Stewart, he is more principled in the basic life, if not the aristocracy life. Regardless, as with all macho movies, male dominance rules and the owner of his wife punishes her.
Isn't the "alpha male gets the girl. He can cheat, grope and lust because it's his privilege, while the beta male is powerless, even with privilege and wealth, and only gets to impotently put himself in his lowly place by being an impotent voyeur that can only watch helplessly as his wife cuckolds him and can only bless her love of the fit alpha male and recognize his inferiority" the embodiment of machoism?
Quite the contrary - this is the embodiment of machoism.
Kind of a bizarre comment. Note that Stewart leaves on his 'wedding' day to go out and make some land deals, more or less putting the nail in the coffin of his relationship with Ada, so you could hardly accuse these men of being layabouts. Stewart and Baines were frontiersmen intending to be farmers. In the movie they were mostly engaged in acquiring land from the natives and 'improving' it by clearing the jungle, putting up fences etc. After they cleared it that land would be theirs.
share[deleted]