You have to admire James Michener's resolve. He's the guy who wrote the book this screen play is based on. Michener wrote one novel or non-fiction work after another, each of them requiring an unconscionable amount of historical and geographic research. There are a couple of dozen doctoral dissertations scattered among his books -- "Centennial," "Texas," "Alaska," "Poland," "Iberia." This is about a certain part of Hawiian history, a sprawling epic, as they say, following multiple narrative threads through three generations. The principal thread belongs to Charlton Heston, who begins as a reckless and uncaring sea captain and winds up as a cigar-puffing prosperous land owner, the evolution being the result of his willingness to take risks. The other main thread belongs to Tina Chen, who begins as an outcast young Chinese woman and becomes a socially prominent leader of the Chinese community in Honolulu. She's a minority among the Chinese in that she is Hakka, an internally marginal group in China. Her minority status isn't Michener's literary trick either. Hakka is one of half a dozen or so common dialects in Chinese and in one of my classes we had representatives of all of them lined up at the front of the room pronouncing one familiar word after another. There was an obvious family resemblance among most of them. You could "hear" the buried Cantonese word when it was spoken in Mandarin Chinese. But not Hakka. It was to the other dialects what Rumanian is to the other Romance languages.
Wait a minute. Was that "off topic"? Well, it doesn't matter much. There's no describing the plot of this movie. If anything ever happened in Hawaiian history, it happens to somebody in this movie. You want to talk leprosy? Racism? The switch from a monarchy to a territory of the United States? The plague? Let it simply be said that it's all here.
Charlton Heston is his usual monolithic self and fills the character appropriately. Tina Chen is a beautiful woman who is, at best, professional. We don't get to see much of Geraldine Chaplin, who rediscovers her native Hawiian genes and appears to go nuts. John Phillip Law isn't around much either. Tina Chen's husband is Mako (who is Japanese) and he's quite good in what is essentially the same role he played in "The Sand Pebbles." Some of the supporting players appear to have been chosen for their looks rather than their talent.
I rather like Hawaii, at least as it was when I was last there, years ago. There's a good deal of solidarity to be found on the islands. During the turmoil of the 1960s when American cities were in the grip of violent revolutions or their simulacrums, Honolulu went quietly about its business, and that in a city more ethnically diverse than any found on the mainland.
Anyway the film is worth watching. I can't say I was especially gripped by any of the incidents or characters. I'd recommend it if only for its educational properties. Michener was only rarely effective as a dramatist but all that time he put into his research certainly paid off.
Wait a minute. Was that "off topic"? Well, it doesn't matter much. There's no describing the plot of this movie. If anything ever happened in Hawaiian history, it happens to somebody in this movie. You want to talk leprosy? Racism? The switch from a monarchy to a territory of the United States? The plague? Let it simply be said that it's all here.
Charlton Heston is his usual monolithic self and fills the character appropriately. Tina Chen is a beautiful woman who is, at best, professional. We don't get to see much of Geraldine Chaplin, who rediscovers her native Hawiian genes and appears to go nuts. John Phillip Law isn't around much either. Tina Chen's husband is Mako (who is Japanese) and he's quite good in what is essentially the same role he played in "The Sand Pebbles." Some of the supporting players appear to have been chosen for their looks rather than their talent.
I rather like Hawaii, at least as it was when I was last there, years ago. There's a good deal of solidarity to be found on the islands. During the turmoil of the 1960s when American cities were in the grip of violent revolutions or their simulacrums, Honolulu went quietly about its business, and that in a city more ethnically diverse than any found on the mainland.
Anyway the film is worth watching. I can't say I was especially gripped by any of the incidents or characters. I'd recommend it if only for its educational properties. Michener was only rarely effective as a dramatist but all that time he put into his research certainly paid off.