 The New Zealand film Whale Rider, which made a big splash earlier this year at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals, is receiving perhaps the best reviews of the year. Many critics remark about the final sequence of the film, whose details are not disclosed. Comments the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert (who gives the film four stars): "It's not just an uplifting ending, but a transcendent one, inspired and inspiring, and we realize how special this movie really is." Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times calls the ending "overwhelming" and describes the movie "a substantial film of unexpected emotional force." Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times says that the film "has the inspiring resonance of found art." Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer waxes poetic in her praise: "The rhythms of Whale Rider are hypnotic as the ebb tide, haunting as the song of the humpback sea mammal, bracing as the ocean spray." Praise for the film is not unanimous, however. Jan Stuart writes in Newsday: "The film begins in mourning, wallows in gloom and surfaces briefly with a last-ditch burst of sister-power glory. It wants to be triumphal, but it plays like a dirge." |
