Backbencher

Whale Rider is a very good movie I thought. The movie starts off by getting you involved with this newborn child that happens to be a girl. The mother of the girl dies after childbirth and her twin brother dies as well after birth. The baby girl that survives name is Pai. The grandfather of Pai instantly asks the father of Pai where the boy is and wants nothing to do with the girl because he is the Chief of their Maori village and the boy was to learn the history behind their ancestors and become chief. Since the boy dies the grandfather instance seems to have a huge grudge against Pai. But as Pai grows older and also because her father leaves right after she was born due to the grandfather, it seems that the grandfather takes a liking to her because he had too. He did teach her the chants and the history. But then when Pai is 12 her father comes back and it seems to throw the grandfather into fast mode of finding a new chief. This I think was because the grandfather finds out that Pai's father is going to have a child with a white women from Germany. So the grandfather takes all the young Maori boys of the village to teach them the ways of the Maori ancestors. But Pai gets left out because she is a girl and being a girl and a chief would cause a curse. Well Pai stands in the background learning all the techniques that the boys of the village are learning and her grandfather finds out. Well the grandfather fails at finding the next chief and Pai is the one to recover the whale tooth. In the end Pai does become the next chief because she ends up riding a whale as her ancestor Paika did (the first one to come over).
Through out the whole movie I felt really sorry for Pai because she seemed to just get passed around. Also I will admit that I cried because I became very emotionally attached to Pai. I also felt that this movie was a great way to see the culture of a Maori village. This movie was not what I expected it was much better!