RAPA NUI
A film review by Eric Mankin
Copyright 1994 Eric Mankin
In the past three decades, archaeologists have decoded the riddle of the famous statues on Easter Island--Rapa Nui to its inhabitants--as a clear and terrifying ecological parable for a small planet. Polynesians reached the remote, once heavily forested island in wooden boats; built an impressive civilization, and in the process chopped down the trees--all the trees.
No more boats, no more fishing, no new wooden tools--just at a time when more of all of the above were needed for a much-increased population. Cut to a futile but increasingly elaborate attempt to fid a way out through religion (the giant moai figures) and then, abruptly but predictably, to population crash and no more civilization at all: just a barbarized, starving semi- cannibal remnant hiding out from each other in caves, stone age survivalists in an apocalypse of their own making.
Here's an attempt to make a feature (Nova has already made a superb documentary segment) about that apocalypse, on its original locations. Director Robin Reynolds and producer Kevin Costner make up for the noisome pandering of their previous collaboration, 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves': it took real courage to try to make this.
And it would be an easy film to make fun of. The story, by Reynolds and Tim Rose Price attempts to make up for its commercial improbability by seizing on conventional commercial elements: a triathlon-like ritual race for sacred priesthood, complete with wise old trainer; a Romeo and Juliet romance between a scion of the ruling caste (Jason Scott Lee) and a gorgeous plebeian (Sandrine Holt), with Esai Morales playing the embittered slave-caste rival. But hokey as the elements are, Lee and Morales bring real passion to what they do, and at least some scenes, like the chopping down of the island's last tree, have a significance impossible to misunderstand, or to destroy.
Eric Mankin
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