This movie really surprised me. I was somewhat offended by its title and rented it against my better judgement. In the first few minutes I was charmed, then confused, then charmed again.
Finally, I was totally lost. This is really a movie that must be seen more than once to get the full impact. The various plots and subplots seem disjointed in the beginning, but their relationships become clearer as the movie goes on.
The idea behind the movie is the culture shock that occurs when we are confronted with people and situations we are unfamiliar with. In the beginning, a family of bushmen in the remote desert are confronted, or rather
hit on the head, by a Coke bottle carelessly thrown from a passing airplane. Their reaction to this foreign object is completely disarming and, even without a word of understandable speech, they make us understand what a revelation
this strange object is. They rapidly pass through confusion, suspicion, into curiosity as they examine the bottle. Soon it becomes the most sought-after possession they have. When they begin to fight over it, they make a decision
to return it to its rightful owners: The Gods, of course. Who else could have sent it from heaven?
After trying over and over to give the bottle back to heaven, they try to bury it, but it keeps turning up. In desperation, they send one little bushman to walk to the end of the world and throw it off. His journey, and the
characters he encounters in this journey, are sometimes hilarious, often sad, but always mystifying to the little guy.
In other plots, a sheltered city girl comes to the bush to teach the native children and meets up with a bumbling scientist, his crusty aide, and two whole armies of warring political factions.
All the actors do an admirable job, but none of them were really familiar from any other film I’ve ever seen. The scenery is beautiful at times and while the sound effects were ordinary for the most part, I particularly loved the scene
where the natives serenaded their new schoolteacher on her arrival. Their song was beautiful and touching.
This is a wonderful, thought-provoking, entertaining movie that deserves to be seen again and again. We watched it with our older children, and recently with our younger. I have no doubt that they will watch it with their children, too, one day.