Rick’s Reel Recommendations | 3 Films on Whenua

RICK'S REEL RECOMMENDATIONS | ISSUE THREE | WHENUA

Written by Ricky Lai (he/him) | @rickthelai & Letterboxd | Film Columnist

1. Chocolat (Claire Denis, 1988)

Don’t get mixed up here: I don’t mean ‘Chocolat’ (2000). Not the shlocky rom-com starring Juliette Binoche as a travelling chocolatier who brings love back to rural France with the power of sweeties, the DVD which you find on op-shop shelves next to Hayley Westenra CDs. I mean the lesser-known ‘Chocolat’, about a native African servant named Protée (Isaach de Bankolé) working for a white family in colonial Cameroon. Those familiar with the restless eye of Claire Denis’ later masterworks (‘Beau Travail’, ‘35 Shots of Rum’) may be intrigued by how comparatively still she keeps the camera in this debut film. Instead, ‘Chocolat’ realises other ways of wandering to and fro. Abrupt cuts from one tableau to the next make each resident’s relationships with their environments feel even richer. As does Denis’ remarkable balance of recounting her own West African upbringing without centring her gaze. So while this is the memory of a Caucasian narrator, and our sympathy aligns with Protée, each character still gets their chance to be placed at odds with their own horizons. By contrast, the final minutes of ‘Chocolat’ ring with an optimistic euphony, honing in on a few citizens untethered from the rest of the story. They are a trio of Cameroonian airport workers, bantering on their smoke break before the rain comes down.

1. When It Rains (Charles Burnett, 1995)

At a staggering length of 13 minutes, this will no doubt be the shortest film I recommend in the column, and how’s this as a bonus: you can watch it right now on YouTube! A kind-hearted jazz trumpeter (Ayuko Babu), donning one of George Clinton’s outfits, walks block to block in his LA neighbourhood to help a mother pay rent on New Year’s Eve. Everybody he encounters in this ‘Bicycle Thieves’- esque quest seems passive about the favour, returning to their mundane business after Babu leaves. The funniest is a kid spending his afternoon doing armpit farts in the yard. Some are also a lot less helpful than others. I find pleasure in the rhythm of this film, informed early on by Babu’s narration over a city symphony of the LA streets. Listen closely to his lyric: the assonance when he raps ‘My mother and her mother never uttered a mumbling word’. After that, it’s hard not to see a musical essence in Burnett’s storytelling. So on one hand, the film is like jazz: we observe variations on a riff (the act of asking to spare a dollar).

On the other hand, the film is also like the blues: a tone-poem under the strain of displacement and poverty. Babu does eventually appease the stolid landlord, but not in the way you’d expect: Behold, a tale where money circulates through a circuit of owed fees to vacant pockets.

1. I Walked With a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1941)

The concept of whenua in the horror genre could fill out a whole other piece. That’s what happens when a genre’s bread and butter is the spilling of blood, whether staining walls or seeping into soil. For instance, ‘Mārama’, which has just been released in theatres, seems to be Aotearoa’s most fertile example to date. I also considered so many other worldwide examples: ‘Onibaba’ (1964), ‘Ganja & Hess’ (1973), ‘The Wicker Man’ (1973), ‘Ravenous’ (1999), ‘Wendigo’ (2001), ‘Dumplings’ (2004) & ‘Chime’ (2024). All of these are worth a slice of your day, but they kneel before the moonlit magnificence of Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton’s ‘I Walked with a Zombie’. It is only over an hour and still feels gigantic. Borrowing the skeleton of Brontë’s ‘Jane Eyre’, the duo smuggled a haunting poem about power and slavery into the cadaver of the zombie-themed B-movie. A nurse travels to the Caribbean to help a wealthy family that inherited a sugar plantation from their slave-trading ancestors, as their matriarch has mysteriously gone catatonic. The doctor says a tropical disease is to blame; their maid suggests she is under a Haitian Vodou spell. And what imperishable atmosphere comes of it. Shadows hang over the island like an unwashable shame. We lean over the cliff’s edge, standing above a portal of crashing waves. A Haitian man stares vastly into nothingness, and we can recognise the passage of history in his eyes, while the pulse of a distant ritual – always drumming along – threatens to jolt you awake at last.