Tonight I watched a movie about the real Princess Ka'iulani of Hawaii. It was released on dvd in 2010 and stars Q'orianka Kilcher as the princess and Shaun Evans as her English love interest. I know I'm Book Babe, but I thought some of my followers would be interested in this.
In the time when Hawaii was conforming to the ways of the white man and trying to be peaceful, the American land owners began taking over. It started off with placing a gun to the Hawaiian king's head and forcing him to sign a new constitution stating that only land owners could vote. Who were the land owners? White men.
Princess Ka'iulani was the niece of this king. When things get heated in Hawaii, she is sent to live with a family in England and falls in love with a young man. But when her uncle dies, she must go back to Hawaii and help her aunt who is losing the throne. Hawaii is about to be anexed.
Needless to say, she lost Hawaii, but she did gain the Hawaiian's people right to vote and be American citizens. She died one year later.
This movie chronicles all of that. I enjoyed it very much except for the love scenes in England.. They were predictable and somewhat stupid. (Cavorting on the seashore and all that...and ankle and the bicycle PUHLEASE). And I think the makeup people went a bit overboard with the actresses' top lip...
My favorite scene (and I may not have it word for word...) is when the princess says to her English man, "What will it fade to without me? What will I fade to without it?" Something like that. Powerful words, referring to her home of Hawaii...
For those that may have read the book, The Last Aloha by Gaellen Quinn, I recommend this movie.
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| Princess Ka'iulani |
Cool, I am going to watch it, but the wait at the library is a wee bit long.
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify, Ka'iulani had nothing to do with "voting" (Hawaiians did not want a US Territorial status any more than they wanted an oligarchic republic run by white businessmen...no real difference in the long run) or facilitating the process of her people becoming American citizens...the film makes a confusing and misleading hash out of historic events. The last thing the Princess ever wanted to happen was annexation...and she helped the Hawaiian patriotic organizations present the anti-annexation Ku'e Petitions to the US annexation commissioners. She worked to stop annexation, period. She was a Hawaiian national to the end. Hawai'i became a fake republic, territory and state against the will of the Kanaka Maoli people.,, and Ka'iulani died of thyroid disease worsened by extreme stress.
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