Directed by Tusi Tamasese
The father of a deeply troubled household that endured tragedy both from without and within, seeks to reconcile with his youngest daughter by making a journey to both symbolically and culturally lay the family "ghosts" to rest.
Germany Berlin International Film Festival 
New ZealandM Germany New Zealand 
One Thousand Ropes, much like its New Zealand counterpart Once Were Warriors, focuses on the trauma and cross-generational fallout of spousal abuse. Where it differs is in its meditative approach, quiet and restrained, as we watch patriarch Maea wrangle with the ghosts of his past and try to protect his daughter from a man just like him.
Fans of the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul will appreciate the style of this film, as well as the deep spirituality present. Whether seen as metaphor or a literal representation of the characters beliefs, the supernatural aspects are integrated subtly, whilst remaining entirely unsettling. It was something I wasn’t prepared for, but stuck with me long after viewing.
One Thousand Ropes is a film that deserves to be seen by many more than it has. If you consider yourself a lover of world cinema, please do yourself a favour and seek out this unique and excellent little film.
honestly there’s probably a lot that went over my head, but i enjoyed this for what it was, for what i got out of it. it’s remarkably serene, but you can feel the undercurrent of violence building beneath still waters. you feel it in maea so strongly that the final thirty minutes had me sick with nerves. i particularly loved the focus on his hands. our hands are capable of so much, but use them to hurt for too long and you’ll convince yourself that’s all they were made for. maea makes the conscious choice every day to use his for good, because he needs to prove to himself that they’re capable of that. and they are for a time. at the beginning of the movie, when he uses his hands gently, they’re steady. by the end, after that control has been tested and started to slip, every placid movement makes them tremble.
Where did Tusi Tamasese go????😭😭😭 give THIS mf the funding bro🙏🏽🙏🏽😭😭 we NEED him😭😭😭
weird that a māoli chick was the one to tell me that this is the standard samoan movie to watch when I’ve never heard of this movie before lmao. Found it peculiar that a man was the person to do this type of fofo on pregnant woman when samoan culture is usually so uptight on men interacting with women in certain ways( which should also be common sense).
The colouring was too bland for me the cinematography was beautiful, you’d be caught in a standstill with a few shots, where the director paused the movie for a moment and had the audience engrasped. There were a few shots that hit close with me and I’m sure would hit close with…
Not what I was expecting having just watched The Orator a couple of days ago, but just as good.
One thing I really like about this director is his ability to grip the viewer by only feeding us tidbits of information at a time, so we have build the story and the characters as we go. There's very little reliance on exposition and it's fantastic - we need more of this.
Really enjoyed it a lot, even in the bits where I got scared.
Similar to last year’s exceptional Waru, One Thousand Ropes deals with the intergenerational trauma of domestic abuse in New Zealand’s most disadvantaged groups without glossing over facts or showing gratuitous violence. While the former followed a Māori funeral, the latter focuses on Maea, a Samoan migrant baker and midwife who uses his skills to help women after he abused his (now absent, possibly dead) wife. When his pregnant and battered daughter Ilisa takes refuge with him, the wandering soul who shares his house threatens to destroy their lives – a brilliant touch of magical realism that foregrounds the mental peril of Maea’s and Ilisa’s inner demons.
Tusi Tamasese’s sparse script allows long, silent shots…
Really interesting watching this right after Once Were Warriors. Muted, slow; violence lurks in the corners but rarely onscreen. An emphasis on hands that I appreciated, interesting visual connections between boxing, punching, kneading bread, and massage. Stubborn main characters and quippy dialogue remain consistent with The Orator, but while the ending is still gentle, it feels much less triumphant.
Still mulling over what the title means.
a pretty heavy film that left me with lots to think about
So much in close-up, it left me feeling claustrophobic. It's demanding, powerful and a vivid portrait of Pasifika. But I don't think I can watch any more birth scenes for a while.
When hands can no longer serve a purpose.
---------
Update 24 March: I wrote this before in part because I'm well aware I tend to dwell on flaws instead of strengths, have no interest in trash talking NZ films of ambition, and had the niggling feeling I had missed the point in a rather major way. With the benefit of hindsight, I can say a few things:
1) I did miss the point in a major way. More on that below.
2) This is a film that is unabashedly for and about Samoan culture in ways that are not necessarily exclusionary of other viewpoints so much as disinterested in them, which I think is a great thing in times of…
Having thoroughly enjoyed Tusi Tamasese's 'The Orator' a few years ago, I was keen to see what his subsequent work was like. The close-quartered narrative is deeply seeped in Samoan culture and mythology, and at times we feel like we are outside looking in on something we don't necessarily have to understand. A visually engaging film, which works best as an experiment in storytelling.
Every projection of the abusive father in New Zealand lays, for better or worse (perhaps worse), under the shadow of Jake the Muss in Once Were Warriors — a flagrant cartoon-sketch of a muscle-armed, bottle-breaking David Tua-wannabe with no restraint for whose lights to punch out. I’ve always felt that despite how effectively Lee Tamahori’s visceral approach shocks the senses, the subject matter could have, by now, used a more sensitive retread. In the crushingly slow and sensuously ravishing One Thousand Ropes, the patriarch of a Samoan father is introduced as a looming background presence during the birth of his daughter’s child; the two do not make eye contact. Between interludes that draw from Māori folklore – including the titular…
