My Favorite Films

My top ten films, all time* {first draft, no order, add urs in comments!} I put out this list on my group Building an Intellectual Culture, but without descriptions of each film.

The Mission

I worked on a film (screenwriter) about missionaries and native people, but I have to admit it doesn’t compare to The Mission. Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons play two opposite types of colonizers who reconcile but ultimately cannot reconcile the colonial project itself. Repentance is a major theme here.

The American

George Clooney in his best performance depicts the precise movements of the assassin – push-ups in the Italian  hotel room, cleaning the rifle with efficient movements. But the assassin falls in love and amid themes of lights at the end of tunnels, it all leads to the final scene which I imagine many missed the meaning of.

Ascenseur pour l’échafaud 

Alright, it’s melodramatic but it captures the aesthetic of film noir so perfectly: the texture of the black and white, the thriller-mystery plot … but it probably would not have made this list with the one-night session soundtrack from Miles Davis that makes the film iconic.

Breathless

Every film has borrowed from this one – to the point where critic Bob Green says there’s nothing left for it to give. The new film Nouvelle Vague by Richard Linkletter can bring a new appreciation of a perhaps overwatched film and it’s rebellious production by director Jean-Luc Goddard.

Bicycle Thieves

For me this film showed how communities band together when an injustice happens, like the theft of a bicycle. Father-son relationships and shame also feature prominently here.

The Matrix

People exist who call The Matrix a documentary. But anyway, the scene where Neo wakes up in his pod and looks down at the endless row of pods filled with people/batteries is a singular scene in cinema (in my humble opinion).

Mulholland Drive

The film critic for Honolulu Weekly didn’t get this one when it came out. Mullholland Drive scolds us for our superficiality, which Hollywood both exploits and is the Mecca of. The transformation of Naomi Watts in this from bright, optimistic, if naive aspiring actor to burned out husk is remarkable.

Vertigo 

It’s interesting that in the film, a character mourns the loss of the old San Francisco, because the film itself depicts what for me is the iconic period of the city (I lived there briefly). When Jimmy Stewart is just driving around the town with the film’s jazz soundtrack, that alone makes the film worth watching. The plot is the icing.

Tree of Life

It’s hard to describe this film at all, but Terrence Malick spent years collecting the images that give us the sense of its grand scope. Superclusters and such. Brad Pitt’s finest performance holds its own against Jessica Chastain’s amazing debut(? First I’d heard of her). 

Death in Venice

If longing is your thing, this is the film. The efforts a failed composer goes through to attract a mere glimpse from a beautiful boy… Said boy was cast and called the most beautiful boy in the world – there’s a documentary about him.

Honorable mention:

Citizen Kane

Nothing can be added here to the praise already afforded the greatest film of all time, in the view of some critics.

Brazil

Mostly my first Political Science professor recommended this, and I still feel that it says some important- about bureaucracy and modernity.

Empire Strikes Back

The second Sci-fi was my favorite film growing up and I can’t let go of it. The concept of the used future was something I intuited even back then.

Barry Lyndon

I wrote about this thanks to Prof Mike Shapiro – Kubrick reproduced paintings, who static nature represents the lack of social mobility that Ryan O’Neill’s character comes up against.

400 Blows

Jules and Jim

Here we see the boredom with modernity, even during perilous situations.

The Red Violin

This got a bad review when it came out due to “lack of character development” but the violin is the character and it has quite an arc here.

The Trial

Like Brazil,  it more starkly aesthetic in its black and white, Wells lighting – few have matched it. Of course I’m partial to Anthony Perkins and his frustrated victim of the state and the law.

Kafka

Again, like Brazil, but with one of my favorite people, Jeremy Irons, who strangely resembles Kafka himself. There’s a small surprise here worth the wait and the watch.

The Good Shepard

Matt Damon definitely underacts here, but the cast, Eddie Redmayne and DeNiro rounds out the experience, compensating for Damon. A good one if you want to know about secret societies and government agencies.

Waikiki

I already wrote an extensive review of this film, which the director Chris Kahunahana seemed to appreciate – an excerpt:

I spent a sleepless night trying to process the visual feast I had just consumed; a feast equal parts brandy, which goes down smooth and razor blades that tear up your insides. Visually, Kahunahana shows us what film can be again, that it can slow down and it doesnʻt have to be an unwatchable two hour punch in the face by Marvel characters.

Burning

A new addition, based on a Murakami story, “Barn Burning” but made by a Korean director.

Review of Kamalehua: The Sheltering Tree – the First Hawaiian Opera

After the opera Kamelehua, I happened to run into Tiffany Lani Ing, author of Reclaiming Kalākaua, and we had both had the same thought: “This is something Kalākaua might have done!”

The storyline follows the life – and secret mission – of Timoteo Haʻalilio, envoy and minister plenipotentiary for Kamehameha III tasked with gaining recognition of Hawaiʻi’s sovereignty from Britain, France, the US, and less-known: Belgium.

Kauikeaouli, Kamehameha III

Nālani Kneubuhl – I was involved with her play on Prince Kūhiō – was listed as “librettist” – playwright of the opera. Herb Mahelona not only set the story to music but did the translation into Hawaiian. The play was about 75% in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, nearly 25% English and one song in French (when Haʻalilio is in Paris).

At the political climax of the story, Kauikeaouli, in military dress, raises his hand and says – sings! – the very famous line “Ua may ke ea o ka āina i ka pono” (correctly translated, finally!), across the street from the statue of the king in the same gesture, wearing the same clothes. Iʻm not sure if people realized this.

Statue of Kamehameha III at Thomas Square, site of the restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1843

I, for one, sat there in the audience amazed that I was watching a Hawaiian opera. Iʻm a fairly regular opera goer, so I have something to compare this to. Kamalehua was in my view, basically on par with operas one might attend: I myself have seen Carmen, La Boheme, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aida, Lucia de Lamermoor and Rigoletto. It doesnʻt quite have a show-stopping piece on the level of “Toreador” from Carmen, but few operas do and the duet in which Kauikeaouli and Haʻalilio declare their brotherly affection is quite beautiful.

This opera would not have happened at this level without Quinn Kelsey, called “the greatest Verdi baritone of his generation.” The opera had three Native Hawaiians – two were from the Kelsey family (Blythe Kelsey plays Kuhina Nui Kekeuluohi). And while Kauikeaouli was not played by a Hawaiian singer, the dialect coach did a great job with these singers.

Patrick Makuakane – a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient – provided dancers, who combined hula with a touch of modern dance in an absolutely sublime combination. They were joined by chanter and Kumu Hula Kailihiwa Vaughn-Darval, daughter of Palani Vaughn. Kumu Hiwa to us (she is the Kumu Hula of St. Andrews Schools where my wife works and my daughter is her student), is a first class dancer and chanter of the old school. “Aunty Nola” Nahulu (again we know her through our kids’ participation in Hawaiʻi Youth Opera Chorus) directed a great choir and, if Iʻm not mistaken, played one of the aliʻi who, in spirit, attend Haʻalilioʻs tragic death along with the angel of death.

Hawaiʻi Opera Theater CEO Andrew Morgan said that the opera would be brought back in about three years – it was a packed house. This one is a must-see, donʻt miss it when it returns to Blaisdell Concert Hall. Morgan also made a special shout out to Kauʻi Sai-Dudoit, without whoʻs research this opera would not have come to fruition.

The First American Revolution? Pueblo Revolt: the Reading Journals 57

Ned Blackhawk won a National Book Award for his groundbreaking history The Rediscovery of America. It begins, more or less, in New Mexico. Whilst there (my oldest went to, and graduated from University of New Mexico with a degree in Theatre – go Lobos!), it struck me that the history of interactions between the Spanish and Native Americans there (especially Pueblo) predated what we think of as American history. That is to say, before Plymouth Rock. Blackhawk calls the 1680 Pueblo Revolt “arguably the first American revolution!”

My aforementioned oldest kid, Noe Field-Perkins, played one of the brothers who led the Pueblo Revolt in the play of the same name at Santa Fe Playhouse.

Pueblo Revolt, directed by Tara Moses, won Best Play, Best New Play, and the other actor Bradley Lewis, a Pueblo himself (it was a two-person show), won Best Performer in a Play, in New Mexico. (Noe was nominated and got eighth in the voting in this category).

Hereʻs how Blackhawk describes the revolt:

The playwright of Pueblo Revolt, Dillon Chitto, a Pueblo raised and educated in Santa Fe, said that the revolt got scant coverage even in the New Mexico history course that high school students take in the state.

At about 7 years old, Noe asked me “When can I be on PBS?” This came out last year on PBS New Mexico:)

What I’m Reading – Blackhawk, Murakami, Montaigne: The Reading Journals 56

Rather than writing on one book, Iʻll go over here the several books that occupy my reading time. I tend to reading small bursts of 20-30 minutes, but two or three times a day, and what I read depends on whatʻs sitting there at the time.

I recently bought Ned Blackhawk’s The Rediscovery of America, and am amazed by how well-written it is. Rewriting American history is no small task, but one balks at the exclusion of native history that Blackhawk brings in. (Blackhawk is Western Shoshone from Nevada, a nation which M.T. Kato has famously noted is the most bombed nation on Earth – nuclear testing in this case – with over 1000 nuclear tests).

I’m on an advisory board with the well-respected Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History tasked with improving the teaching of Indigenous history within US History. This is what made me buy the book. I almost bought, and will buy soon (I had it in my hand!), Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, along the same lines but over 10 years old now.

Blackhawk won a National Book Award for his book on the same day as Craig Santos Perez, who has guest blogged in these pages of the Umiverse – they took a selfie together!

Iʻm reading yet another Murakami novel, his newest: The City and its Uncertain Walls, but it hasnʻt completely grabbed me yet as his other books did despite an interesting premise: a couple who “lives” in an imaginary walled city which preoccupies and distracts them from the mundane life in modern Japan.

Iʻm reading, piecemeal, Michel de Montaigne’s Essays, which is interesting in its lack of self-importance and its navel gazing as philosophy. He interweaves Latin passages with the dexterity of a sage – but he was, after all, the intellectual locked in an ivory tower – he was literally writing in a tower on his estate.

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Finally, Iʻve been working my way through Abraham Maslow’s second-most famous book: the Farther Reaches of Human Nature, a kind of proto-Integral theory (along the lines of Ken Wilber, who certainly drew from Maslow). His more famous hierarchy of thought – from remembering at the base to creating at the pinnacle – has occupied my thoughts as I work my way through the semester with my students and wonder exactly whatʻs going through their minds in terms of the content I teach (history and environment these days).

More Murakami – Kafka on the Shore: The Reading Journals 55

Haruki Murakami noted that the Japanese transliteration of Kafka – kafuka – means alternately “possible” and “impossible,” and noted that he could do a lot with that. He also let on that he started the book Kafka on the Shore with only the title and went from there.

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Kafka on the Shore might be described as “magical realism,” in which magical flutes and fish raining from the sky are inserted into the mundane, in some ways, existence of the 15 year old protagonist Kafka.

Haruki Murakami

A runaway, Murakami lights the imagination of all bibliophiles with the idea that his hero will runaway to live in a library. Because the imagery is so metaphorical and the book has a Freudian theme, we can assume that Murakami means something like a library of the mind. And indeed, Kafka often does not know when he is dreaming or awake in this library.

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His alternative hero is “dumb” and can’t read. But he wasn’t always so: part of the book is military reports from the WWII and occupation period, during which something like chemical warfare was conducted on the Japanese population (in Murakami’s story at least) and the dumbness was the effect of these chemicals.

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Between impossible happenings and the unlikely collision of these two protagonists (Murakami himself at different ages and different phases?) the story unfolds to a more climactic ending than Murakami’s typical plot. Recommended.

My Speech at ʻIolani Palace on January 17th, 2026: 133 years post-overthrow

On the day of the overthrow, I had the last word on the overthrow and where we might go from here

Aloha kakou,

 
I wouldn’t be speaking here today if it weren’t for the fact that on January 17th, 2012, the Honolulu Star Advertiser failed to mention anything about the overthrow. But people – Hawaiians – they know the date, January 17th, and it so happened that in December 2011 I had started a little blog and I wrote a short article on the overthrow which hundreds, and eventually thousands ended up reading. That little blog which started as a joke – it’s called the Umiverse- now is nearing 300,000 views, that’s about how many Hawaiians live in Hawaiʻi. I mention all this just to point out that there is a strong desire to learn our history- a desire that is not being fulfilled by schools nor by the media – and that is my message today – the first part at least, it’s a simple one: honor the history. And this is a duty of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike who live here.

I’m on the board of the Hawaiian Historical Society which goes back to the time of Lili’uokalani and we try to do just that – honor the history – and I can tell you that we have our work cut out for us! It’s a bigger task than our board of 12 can do and so it really lies with all of us to make this happen.

I think of the history of our movement and the fact that several generations now have given themselves to it: staring with Kekuni Blaisdell from the WWII generation, the Baby Boomers like HaunaniKay Trask, George Helm,  Poka Laenui, Liko Martin, Lynette Cruz and the Protect Kaho’olawe Ohana, Generation X, with people like Keanu Sai, Laulani Teale, Millennials like Kaho’okahi Kanuha and now the younger generation is coming to the forefront – many of them were here at the palace yesterday. It’s been a long road but if you saw the opio yesterday you would be optimistic as I am.

Liko Martin at ʻIolani Palące, ca. 1970s

The second part of my message today is one that occurred to me when I was trying to find a new way to talk about the overthrow, which we’ve been examining and reexamining for over 30 years. So this deals with a part of my life that many don’t know about: even those who know me might not know that while half of my growing up was here in Hawaii, the other half of my youth was spent in the South Pacific in the Kingdom of Tonga… and the opportunity arose for me to travel back to Tonga less than 2 months ago for the first time since I was a teenager.

Tonga celebrated the 150th anniversary of adopting its Constitution (1875-2025), which was based mainly of the Hawaiian Constitution of 1864

Some of you may know that Tonga’s constitution is heavily based – word for word in many cases – on the Hawaiian Constitution of 1864. So it is as if Hawai’i’s constitutional monarchy lives on in a way in Tonga – they still live under this constitution, in a way that is not perfect but it is functional. There is basically no homelessness nor any serious hunger there even though their economy is one 250th the size of Hawaiʻi’s.

So this new way of looking at the overthrow is to think about what was lost at that time. One thing that was lost was Constitutional Monarchy, which I can tell you is an imperfect system, and it was replaced with another VERY imperfect system. In 30 years of my studying forms of government and political philosophers studying them for 2000 years we know that the perfect government doesn’t exist. But what’s needed is a constant vigilance – not to get the result you want (there’s been far too much of that recently) – but for a legitimate process. It’s really the process that matters in the end. (Think about it: every country has a left and a right..)

It was not lost on me that on this day of the overthrow I have the last word on the overthrow. And so I thought deeply about what that last word should be. 

We were wronged on this day, the US has admitted that much – but it was 133 years ago. It may be time to turn our sights from the grievance towards solutions. Of course that work is already ongoing.

Lili’uokalani (source: Hawai’i Archives)

It was an outsider, a Swiss – Niklaus Schweitzer – who has lived among us a long time who wrote in his book Turning Tide that this movement, our movement (right here) is “evolutionary rather than revolutionary” – some may disagree with that characterization but all he meant was that we have been building the infrastructure of the Lahui within the existing structure. Perhaps it’s time to really focus on this building while still respecting the history.

I think of all that has been built since the first of these gatherings in 1993: the Hawaiian-focused charter schools, the burial councils, two more Kamehameha campuses, Kamakakuokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH Manoa, a PhD program in Hawaiian studies at UH Hilo, recently a new Kaiapuni- Hawaiian secondary immersion school in the Ewa Moku, the Malama Honua worldwide voyage by Hokuleʻa, and many, many ‘Āina-based programs.

We know what the solutions are: we need to educate ourselves and educate our own. We need to build viable and sustainable economic systems. This is sometimes called civil society- whatever the future of the Lahui may be, it will need organizations inside of it- of the kind that will do things to make life better but that the government won’t or can’t do. On the note of economics, how much do we really need in the way of material possessions? Is what we really need objects – things – or is it dignity? I can tell you that Tongans don’t have a lot in terms of material possessions but they unquestionably have dignity. Building, rather than waiting, could bring dignity – something to be proud of. When we were PhD students together, Keanu Sai said to me – and I haven’t forgotten it: “It’s easy to destroy, it’s hard to build.” We know what to do but knowing is not enough – it’s the act of building that matters.

Mahalo nui ia ‘oukou – aloha

Tao Te Ching 2 – on Leadership: The Reading Journals 54

I said Iʻd come back to the Tao Te Ching, but there is so much in these 81 verses, I thought Iʻd focus on a topic: leadership in this case. The text brings up the question of ego in a leader:

When the Master governs, the people
are hardly aware that he exists.
Next best is a leader who is loved.
Next, one who is feared.
The worst is one who is despised.

If you don’t trust people,
you make them untrustworthy.

The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, “Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”

― Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching

This is not the model of leadership we practice in contemporary Western society. If you think about the process of campaigning, it consists of bragging about yourself – and at times bashing others – for about 9 months straight. A normal person does not do this, much less a “master.”

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Wayne Dyer interprets these lines:

“Truly inspiring leaders get results by their own example: They encourage others to be responsible and do the right thing, but not by proclaiming and bragging about their unimpeachable management.” — Dr. Wayne Dyer.

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In Polynesian societies, where I have spent much of my time, bragging about oneself is something that simply isnʻt done. People do have egos, but they either wonʻt boast of their traits or accomplishments or they find clever ways to boast without boasting, like saying that someone else said they were awesome. But never directly. All this suggests weʻve lost our way in our pursuit of leadership.

Hauʻofa’s Tales of the Tikongs 1: The Reading Journals 53

The Tongan scholar of Pacific Island Studies Epeli Hauʻofa, is so revered in his field that his idea of “our sea of islands” is nothing short of the orienting metaphor of Pacific Island Studies. Hau’ofa was a Tongan-Fijian writer, anthropologist, and scholar born on December 7, 1939, in Papua New Guinea to Tongan missionary parents. He earned his PhD in Social Anthropology from Australian National University and taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of the South Pacific. Hau’ofa was a founding director of the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, promoting Pacific Islander culture and knowledge. He’s known for works like “Tales of the Tikongs” and “We Are the Ocean,” and his influential essay “Our Sea of Islands.” Hau’ofa passed away on January 11, 2009, leaving a lasting legacy in Pacific literature and academia. In Tales of the Tikongs Hauʻofa satirically describes the massive inefficiencies and nepotism of Tongan bureaucracies, with government ministers who shamelessly play cards all day long with their secretaries.

But he described himself as “a clown,” miming and mocking the establishment figures in the era of “DEV-LOP-MEN.” Reading this self-description, one might think that Hauʻofa doesnʻt take himself seriously enough. But that would ignore the Tonga practice of clowning – one in which the subversion of the decorum of a ceremony is itself part of the ritual. An example for the perplexed: at the Tongan national athletics championships, in front of the King (who used to participate in his student days and set records), a runner in the 1500 meters, cut across the field when running far behind the leaders. The entire stadium burst out in laughter. (I was there and can vouch for the veracity of this story).

In a scene in the documentary Tongan Ark, an audience begins clowning at a European opera: “I love you! I love you!” the spectator exclaims in a mocking voice. Futa Helu then had to interrupt the performance and explain that this was a European-style performance and the audience should conform to European viewer norms.

The Wayfinder 1: The Reading Journals 52

Before heading to Tonga, I stocked up on a few books on the South Pacific Kingdom. Only one novel, however, was available in a general bookstore: the brand new The Wayfinder by Adam Johnson. We are lucky that Johnson, a registered Sioux and Booker Prize winner, is one of those fairly rare authors who will take on unfamiliar territory: Tonga in this case. Ancient Tonga to boot. The Tuʻitonga were a very, very long line of rulers out of Muʻa on Tongatapu, and to my mind a difficult subject and protagonist. Johnson just calls his character “Tuʻitonga” from the Sacred South – Tonga means South and tapu of course, sacred. But this does not give us a clear idea of which Tuʻitonga this character is. The line began around 900CE and this episode concerns wars with Fiji and Samoa, which suggests the story takes place between the 13th and 15th centuries.

Johnson’s writing is solid, sometimes bit shocking, such as his way of dealing with Fijian captives. I happened to meet Johnsonʻs consultant at the Atenisi graduation – Vasalua Jenner-Helu – niece of Futa Helu and recently promoted to PhD candidacy at Atenisi. (Prof. Lorenz Gonschor is one of her dissertation advisors – both Helu and Gonschor are mentioned in the post The Mind is Like a Fire). I must here admit that I did not finish this book, owing to the fact that I gave my copy to Lorenz, who would have a difficult time getting it in the South Pacific.

The World is like a Fire: ʻAtenisi University’s 50th Anniversary

Futa Helu, founder of the upstart ʻAtenisi University in Tonga, said “the world is like a fire,” and he set many minds ablaze, with the help of my father. This was in a university that Dean Michael Horowitz said, “for all intents and purposes should not exist in the Kingdom of Tonga.” Having a classical orientation – specifically Greek – it became of hotbed of thought for the fledgling democracy movement in Tonga, to the chagrin of government.

I. Futa Helu, Tongan scholar and founder of ʻAtenisi

In 1981, my family did something crazy: we uprooted and moved to Tonga, a place weʻd never been, nor knew much about. There we lived for 6 years, my parents teaching and my brother and I attending the best schools available. But what did we do at these “best schools?” We memorized things. I got good at that, but at Atenisi they were conducting true education, teaching students to critically think.

With Lorenz Gonschor, former Associate Dean of ʻAtenisi and author of A Power in the World

Recently, I returned to Tonga after nearly 40 years and attended Atenisiʻs 50th anniversary and graduation. The son of the Democracy movement leader spoke of keeping the embers burning of a once blazing fire. The fire blazed under my fatherʻs leadership as Dean, and of course Helu as founder. I should note here that while my father was Dean and is well-remembered in the school, the whole thing was my motherʻs idea – she wanted to teach Polynesians.

My father, Prof. Roland Perkins, Dean of Atenisi (1982-1986) and Futa Helu, founder

If Kamehameha is an experiment in what can be done with unlimited resources, Atenisi is an experiment in what can be done without them. What does it actually cost to transmit knowledge from teacher to pupil? And why does Hawaiʻi not have such a school?