A Film Canon

 

 

There's something vaguely ridiculous about this film, which deals with the turmoil that ensues when a young tribesman of the South Pacific island of Bora Bora elopes with a girl pronounced untouchable. It's partly to do with the conflict between the melodramatic and ethnographic dimensions, which alternately require the viewer to identify with, and assume a certain detachment from, the action. But there's also a discrepancy between Murnau and Flaherty's cinematic sensibilities which, despite sharing certain realist inclinations, nevertheless tend to favour dramatically different methods of execution. Whereas Murnau prioritises expressive evocations of the continuity of of physical space, Flaherty is more comfortable depicting discrete objects and events in studied, sympathetic detail. As a result, Tabu gestures towards both but never fully achieves either, producing a pervasive flatness which in turn gives way to contrivance, epitomised by the very obvious role played by Europeans in the orchestration of the action. That said, the conclusion is undoubtedly Murnau's own, partly because by this point Flaherty had left the project. It also suggests that, for him, the appeal of the project may have ultimately resided in the opportunity to test the distinctive viscosity of his cinematography against that provided by the ocean, most memorably in his translation of the sexual taboo into a particular submarine space - a shark-infested area of the bay designated off-limits for swimmers, boats and pearl-divers - but also in his adaptation of the classical chase to maritime co-ordinates, with wind patterns, wave patterns and rocky atolls substituted for more conventional impediments.