Culture War
Indigenous filmmaker and Golden Horse Winner Laha Mebow’s ‘GAGA’ is a familiar, frustrating indigenous story.
GAGA
Director: Laha Mebow • Writer: Hsieh Hui-ching, Laha Mebow
Starring: Wilang Noming, Kagaw Piling, Wilang Lalin, Ali Batu, Esther Huang, Yukan Losing, Gaki Baunay, Andy Huang, Amakankang Dalus, Yasuy Silan
Taiwan • 1hr 51mins
Opens Hong Kong February 23 • IIA
Grade: B
Films about how the modern world has, is and will continue to encroach on traditional cultures and, more often than not, indigenous communities are nothing new. It’s just that we’ve only started actually fucking listening to them in the last few years. Films like Whale Rider from New Zealand, Kekexili from China, and Canadian and American films Angry Inuk (a doc) and Four Sheets to the Wind have, for years, been grappling with colonial legacies (inequality under the law, cyclical addiction and poverty, lack of access to housing/job/education opportunities and the list goes on) in addition to exploring what happens when tradition butts up against contemporary life. Admittedly that’s been explored in white people movies too, but when you’re talking about a specific type of baked good or a leathermaking craft disappearing it’s sad and wholly unfortunate. When you’re talking about languages, spiritual beliefs and social mores and structures it becomes the elimination of an entire culture. Also known as genocide.
Atayal filmmaker Laha Mebow isn’t talking genocide but she is talking about the slow erosion and commodification of Atayal culture in GAGA | 哈勇家, a low-key family drama starring a mix of professional and mostly non-pro actors. GAGA tracks a family in rural Pyanan trying to preserve its vanishing way of life by playing by the rules set down by Han Taiwanese. Needless to say, this is not that easy, but Mebow finds a bit of hope when all is said and done, though she remains at a loss for answers about what to do.
Culture as commodity
The first indigenous woman in Taiwan to make splash on the international cinema stage (her debut, Hang in There, Kids!, was submitted for Oscar consideration in 2016), Mebow’s style is observational rather than agitational, and it won her a Golden Horse for directing in 2022. On first glance her unfussy, clear-eyed camera – or rather DOP Aymerick Pilarski’s camera – comes off as inert, but give it some time and the action unfolding within the frame is starts to spark to life, if on an emotional and intellectual level rather than a physical one.
The action, such as it is, begins with the village elder, Hayung (non-pro Wilang Noming), out in the lush forest hunting and hiking, and telling his grandson Enoch (Yukan Losing also a non-pro) about the concept of “gaga” and how it guides Atayal life – like how gaga would never allow one fisherman to muscle in on another’s fishing spot. He also comments on how it seems to be disappearing. Also out in the forest is one of Hayung’s sons and Enoch’s uncle, Pasang (Wilang Lalin, three-for-three), showing around some tourists to help the community earn some extra money. Later, a land dispute between Pasang’s brother Silan (Gaki Baunay) and a neighbour – who insists on adhering to the city hall-approved surveyor’s borders – inspires Pasang to run for mayor and bring a little more gaga to town. To really pile on, Pasang’s daughter Ali (Ali Batu) returns from a New Zealand work-study programme pregnant, and his election campaign starts to run catastrophically over budget. Especially when Pasang tries to play by modern, corrupt election rules.
It should go without saying that Mebow and co-writer Hsieh Hui-ching don’t fetishise Atayal culture, nor do they preach about the injustices of colonial life. They don’t need to. It’s all on the screen if you care to look. The clash between tradition and modernity simply exist in Pyanan: Pasang is bribing officials, Enoch is keen to learn the village ways but he’s got a name from the Western Bible, contractors from Taipei insist they know how to roof the local school best, and unmarried Ali’s sleeping with a guy from Auckland, Andy (Andy Huang), who doesn’t even speak Mandarin, never mind Atayal. By the time the family hits rock bottom it’s clear how they got here, and it’s fairly clear why. Pasang is tragic in his way; he’s one of those bunglers whose heart is in the right place but he’s singularly ill-equipped to manoeuvre the world beyond the village. Despite the family’s spectacular downfall GAGA ends on a hopeful note: Enoch is still around, and as Hayung’s widow (Golden Horse winner Kagaw Piling) notes at one point, “Children will find their way.”
Does Mebow touch lightly on the so-called stereotypes found in films about indigenous people? Yes, she does, mostly in Silan’s drinking problem and in the general hand-to-mouth poverty the family lives in, but as Mebow herself has argued those issues are very real in marginalised communities – worldwide (gee, wonder why?) – and not including those elements from larger context would be dishonest. And if nothing else, GAGA is honest. — DEK