Backbencher

Whale Rider starts off with a pair of twins born to a Maori family in a royal lineage. What happens though is that the boy baby dies, taking the mother with him, and the girl baby lives. The grandfather of the family is so disappointed that he doesn't even acknowledge the fact that Pai, the baby girl, was born. All this causes drama enough for the father to run off away from the family. As Pai grows up she continues to deal with her grandfather's disappointment and her father not really being in her life. She tries her whole life to be the Maori leader that her grandfather so dearly wanted her twin brother to be.

Towards the end of the movie a family of whales, a sacred animal to this village of Maori, beach themselves near the village. The village is so distraught because they cannot help the whales get back into the ocean and they feel that it is a sign that they have let their ancestors down in some way. Pai, in a final attempt to prove herself to her grandfather, is able to get the "mother" whale to reenter the ocean which in turn gives the other whales the motivation to reenter. This effort finally impresses her grandfather and seems to bring the village together in a way it has not been in a long time.

This was a great movie to get a look into Maori culture. You could definitely see a male dominated scene, and the order in which you were born plays a huge role in authority. This is also the second thing that I have encountered that was created by Witi Ihimaera. Both the book I read, Bulibasha, and this movie had the same basic story line, a grandfather disappointed in his family, but touched on different elements concerning this disappointment and the Maori culture.