The inhabitants of Rapa Nui forged one of the great cultures of antiquity. They settled a small, utterly remote island in the South Pacific and developed a unique, centuries-old way of life known worldwide for creating monumental stone statues to evoke and venerate their ancestors. There is nothing like their astonishing achievement in the annals of civilization.
Writer/director Kevin Reynolds distorts and insults the noble heritage of this island and its proud people with this tawdry epic. RAPA NUI seizes on lurid myths—ecocide, internecine warfare, starvation, cannibalism, and genocide--to depict past life on the isolated isle as a dismal, dog-eat-dog existence of bottomless despair and cruelty.
Not so. To wit:
-There is no archaeological evidence of cannibalism on Easter Island.
-The Long Ears and the Short Ears, supposedly separate races or clans, probably never existed, and thus never engaged in genocidal warfare. On the contrary, Rapanui society must have been highly cooperative to carve, transport, and erect the colossal statues, as well as to cultivate crops given the island's harsh winds and challenging growing conditions.
-The infamous cutting down of the 16 million trees that originally covered the island was to clear space for agriculture and grazing. Once cut, wood was put to many uses. Rolling the gigantic statues on logs was not the sole or main purpose of clear-cutting, which took place over centuries.
-The religious/political cult of the birdman replaced the veneration of ancestors when the prodigious feat of making statues was no longer sustainable. Statue-carving and the birdman race were not contemporaneous.
-Likewise, the statues were not being toppled as they were simultaneously being manufactured. Probably 200 years passed between the end of statue production and deposing statues in clan rivalries.
Okay, viewers may not care about historical accuracy but just want some rousing entertainment. Alas, with RAPA NUI, they are still out of luck.
It's supposedly a love story, but the heroine is out of sight, shut up in a cave for most of the movie. She looks hideously disheveled when she finally emerges. Yum.
The Short Ears' seemingly voluntary enslavement makes no sense. Why do they put up with brutality and suffering to make statues for the priestly class? How accommodating they are! The Long Ears' power rests on the religious imperative to appease the ancestral spirits. But such moral suasion hardly offers a compelling motive for the Short Ears' elective servitude.
Rapa Nui's troubles are often regarded as a microcosm for the dangers of reckless exploitation of the environment. But the film's depiction of class struggle within an enclosed society with finite resources so lacks subtlety that it is hard to take seriously as a cautionary tale for today's world.
This picture contains one of the most preposterous deus ex machinas in film history. Everyone on the island wants to escape, to sail over the horizon to find a better, happier land. Ah, but there is no wood left to build boats. The answer for the delusional high priest and his gullible followers? Board an iceberg that suddenly appears.
An iceberg.
Really.
At latitude 27 degrees south--nearly tropical waters—they might just as well have found mermaids to carry them away.
As for the cast, the acting is on the see-and-say level. Everyone runs around in skimpy costumes, which at least makes for eye candy. Only Gordon Hatfield, as the heroine's father, creates a character with some depth who appears to possess emotions beyond rage, fear, and longing. His performance is the best part of the film, along with the birdman race, which seems quite authentic (except historically, the race was over when the first sooty tern egg was found on the offshore islet. The finder did have to bring it back up the cliff intact, but doing so was not part of the race).
Despite being filmed entirely on location, there's a sense of artificiality about the statues. The bogus meter starts running early withthe opening credits as the camera tracks up the cliffs of the Ranu Kau volcano to three statues (nonexistent in real life) standing high on the narrow crater rim. Ridiculous. That's the last place the islanders would ever have dragged them. Statues stood on low ground, facing inland on wide platforms. These Hollywood replicas teeter on lofty heights gazing out to sea. Makes for a dramatic shot but absurd archaeology.
Statues the Short Ears carve in the film look fake, big props lacking the contours and color of the originals. When the biggest one is vengefully toppled, the film cuts away the instant before it crashes. Styrofoam just doesn't shatter like rock when it hits the ground.
Production of this $20 million flop in 1994 has had lasting effects for today's inhabitants of Rapa Nui. The sudden influx of film money into a hardscrabble sheep ranching existence brought about a startling transformation in island life, shifting the entire basis of the economy to tourism with remarkable swiftness.
In a rather eerie redux of past ecological disasters, the island's resources now strain to accommodate 90,000 visitors per year. Discotheques rock until dawn and internet cafés dot the streets of Hanga Roa, the only town, which 30 years ago was a dirt road lined with shacks where there wasn't even a telephone. Now luxury hotels charge $1,000 per night. The standard of living in what was formerly a very sleepy place has improved exponentially.
RAPA NUI, this violent, almost sadistic movie that debases the island has, ironically, presumably made it a more livable locale. Producer Kevin Costner and Warner Brothers join smallpox-carrying European explorers, Peruvian slave traders, Chilean colonialists, rapacious sheep ranchers, missionaries, and archaeologists to create the latest turning point in this fascinating island's tumultuous history.
Writer/director Kevin Reynolds distorts and insults the noble heritage of this island and its proud people with this tawdry epic. RAPA NUI seizes on lurid myths—ecocide, internecine warfare, starvation, cannibalism, and genocide--to depict past life on the isolated isle as a dismal, dog-eat-dog existence of bottomless despair and cruelty.
Not so. To wit:
-There is no archaeological evidence of cannibalism on Easter Island.
-The Long Ears and the Short Ears, supposedly separate races or clans, probably never existed, and thus never engaged in genocidal warfare. On the contrary, Rapanui society must have been highly cooperative to carve, transport, and erect the colossal statues, as well as to cultivate crops given the island's harsh winds and challenging growing conditions.
-The infamous cutting down of the 16 million trees that originally covered the island was to clear space for agriculture and grazing. Once cut, wood was put to many uses. Rolling the gigantic statues on logs was not the sole or main purpose of clear-cutting, which took place over centuries.
-The religious/political cult of the birdman replaced the veneration of ancestors when the prodigious feat of making statues was no longer sustainable. Statue-carving and the birdman race were not contemporaneous.
-Likewise, the statues were not being toppled as they were simultaneously being manufactured. Probably 200 years passed between the end of statue production and deposing statues in clan rivalries.
Okay, viewers may not care about historical accuracy but just want some rousing entertainment. Alas, with RAPA NUI, they are still out of luck.
It's supposedly a love story, but the heroine is out of sight, shut up in a cave for most of the movie. She looks hideously disheveled when she finally emerges. Yum.
The Short Ears' seemingly voluntary enslavement makes no sense. Why do they put up with brutality and suffering to make statues for the priestly class? How accommodating they are! The Long Ears' power rests on the religious imperative to appease the ancestral spirits. But such moral suasion hardly offers a compelling motive for the Short Ears' elective servitude.
Rapa Nui's troubles are often regarded as a microcosm for the dangers of reckless exploitation of the environment. But the film's depiction of class struggle within an enclosed society with finite resources so lacks subtlety that it is hard to take seriously as a cautionary tale for today's world.
This picture contains one of the most preposterous deus ex machinas in film history. Everyone on the island wants to escape, to sail over the horizon to find a better, happier land. Ah, but there is no wood left to build boats. The answer for the delusional high priest and his gullible followers? Board an iceberg that suddenly appears.
An iceberg.
Really.
At latitude 27 degrees south--nearly tropical waters—they might just as well have found mermaids to carry them away.
As for the cast, the acting is on the see-and-say level. Everyone runs around in skimpy costumes, which at least makes for eye candy. Only Gordon Hatfield, as the heroine's father, creates a character with some depth who appears to possess emotions beyond rage, fear, and longing. His performance is the best part of the film, along with the birdman race, which seems quite authentic (except historically, the race was over when the first sooty tern egg was found on the offshore islet. The finder did have to bring it back up the cliff intact, but doing so was not part of the race).
Despite being filmed entirely on location, there's a sense of artificiality about the statues. The bogus meter starts running early withthe opening credits as the camera tracks up the cliffs of the Ranu Kau volcano to three statues (nonexistent in real life) standing high on the narrow crater rim. Ridiculous. That's the last place the islanders would ever have dragged them. Statues stood on low ground, facing inland on wide platforms. These Hollywood replicas teeter on lofty heights gazing out to sea. Makes for a dramatic shot but absurd archaeology.
Statues the Short Ears carve in the film look fake, big props lacking the contours and color of the originals. When the biggest one is vengefully toppled, the film cuts away the instant before it crashes. Styrofoam just doesn't shatter like rock when it hits the ground.
Production of this $20 million flop in 1994 has had lasting effects for today's inhabitants of Rapa Nui. The sudden influx of film money into a hardscrabble sheep ranching existence brought about a startling transformation in island life, shifting the entire basis of the economy to tourism with remarkable swiftness.
In a rather eerie redux of past ecological disasters, the island's resources now strain to accommodate 90,000 visitors per year. Discotheques rock until dawn and internet cafés dot the streets of Hanga Roa, the only town, which 30 years ago was a dirt road lined with shacks where there wasn't even a telephone. Now luxury hotels charge $1,000 per night. The standard of living in what was formerly a very sleepy place has improved exponentially.
RAPA NUI, this violent, almost sadistic movie that debases the island has, ironically, presumably made it a more livable locale. Producer Kevin Costner and Warner Brothers join smallpox-carrying European explorers, Peruvian slave traders, Chilean colonialists, rapacious sheep ranchers, missionaries, and archaeologists to create the latest turning point in this fascinating island's tumultuous history.