The Hawaiians

Edited to note: I originally had this post scheduled to run early on October 11, in conjunction with a movie airing in the overnight hours between October 11 and 12. Only later did I notice another movie on my DVR that was getting another airing on TCM in the mid-afternoon hours of October 12, or too early for me to put up a post to go very early on October 12. Given the choice of having multiple feature-length posts per day for the next few days -- there are several more movies on my DVR scheduled to air in the next few days and I have a feeling that Kagemusha isn't getting a full-length post until later considering that it's on DVD and will probbly get at least one more airing on FXM -- or moving posts around, I decided to do the latter. Thus, a post for a movie that's not airing for another 36 hours.

I mentioned last week with the post on Charlton Heston being Star of the Month that there were a couple of his movies I had on the DVR but hadn't blogged about before. The Four Musketeers was one; I didn't notice until after composing that post that TCM was actually starting the salute in the daytime of October 4. The Heston programming only kicks off in prime time on Wednesday (October 11), but includes a movie I hadn't blogged about before, The Hawaiians, overnight at 1:30 AM (October 12 in the Eastern time zone and October 11 in the Pacific). As always, with an airing coming up I made a point of watching it to do a post on in conjunction with the upcoming airing.

I knew that The Hawaiians was based on a novel by James Michener titled Hawaii, and of course knew that Michener's novels are mostly, if not all sprawling. I didn't recall that this is the second movie based on that novel. The first, Hawaii, was made a few years before The Hawaiians and deals with an earlier part of the novel. I haven't read the book or seen the movie Hawaii, but I can say that you don't need to have done so in order to follow the story and characters here.

Heston plays Whip Hoxworth, grandson to the main character of Hawaii and one-quarter Hawaiian. It's probably about 1870 or so (the movie spans close to 30 years and ends sometime after the 1898 annexation of the islands by the US), and Grandpa has just died, so everybody's gathering for the reading of the will. Whip has spent his time at see sailing and transporting Chinese (well, actually Taiwanese Hakka, who are decidedly not Han Chinese) across the Pacific to work as laborers in Hawaii. This has made Whip unpopular in the family, such that his cousins inherited the good stuff and Whip only gets a bunch of unproductive land on an island where getting enough water is going to be tough.

Whip hires a well-driller to try to find water, and amazingly, the guy does, making Heston's plantation salvageable and, with enough work, giving Whip the potential of becoming a wealthy man, even though neither the whites nor the native Hawaiians care much for new money. Meanwhile, at the beginning of the movie, a woman was found among the laborers Whip was transporting, Nyuk Tsin (Tina Chen). She's saved by another laborer, Mun Ki (Mako), claiming she's his wife; Whip's own wife Purity (Geraldine Chaplin) makes Whip take the two on as house servants.

Nyuk Tsin and Mun Ki become trusted advisers to Whip, and both wives have children at close to the same time. Whip and Purity have a boy, Noel (adult Noel played by John Philip Law), while Nyuk and Mun have a daughter. Since this is one of those sprawling stories and the two families spend a lot of time together, you can guess that the two kids wind up falling in love with each other once they reach adulthood and that this is going to be a problem because of the differing racial backgrounds.

Meanwhile, as I said above, Whip having a plantation and water, he needs something to grow. At the time, sugar cane was the big thing, but the old money that hates Whip don't want to help him. So he goes off to French Guiana to smuggle some pineapples out of the territory since they ought to grow well in equally tropical Hawaii. Sure enough they do, and that's how Whip makes his money.

As I said a couple of times, The Hawaiians is one of those would-be epics, so there's a lot more going on here. It's easy enough to follow, and more than adequate entertainment, but it also not the world's greatest movie. The material really feels more like it the screenwriters should have written with the idea of a TV miniseries in mind, where commercials can be put in at the appropriate points. Of course, I don't think that sort of miniseries really took off until Roots later in the 1970s.

Still, The Hawaiians is definitely worth watching, and now is your chance.