Tanna (2015) poster
2015 · drama · romance · ethnographic

Tanna

Directed by Martin Butler, Bentley Dean1h 44m2015
ElsewhereIMDb6.95kRT93%Metacritic75TMDB6.6110
  • sombre
  • measured
  • intense
Movie DNA

Sombre, measured, measured drama / romance, grounded in texture. Ambivalent, intimate, measured, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.

How every film is hand-scored →

In a traditional tribal society in the South Pacific, a young girl, Wawa, falls in love with her chief’s grandson, Dain. When an inter-tribal war escalates, Wawa is unknowingly betrothed as part of a peace deal. The young lovers run away, refusing her arranged fate. They must choose between their hearts and the future of the tribe, while the villagers must wrestle with preserving their traditional culture and adapting it to the increasing outside demands for individual freedom.

Our read · Tanna (2015) reads as a sombre, measured, grounded drama · romance · ethnographic entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, measured in temperature, ambivalent in outlook. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.

Fingerprint

The shape of Tanna

Tonight, this looks like

What watching it is actually like.

You want a visually stunning indigenous Pacific love story rooted in tradition.

ends bittersweetit stays with youa slow buildgrips by minute 15attention 4/5earns its lengthsubtitles: full
Date nightWith friendsSoloWith parentsKids around
Heads-upnuditysuicide theme

Skip it tonightYou want fast-paced plot or are uncomfortable with cultural nudity and tragedy.

If Tanna is your film
Whale Rider (2002)
Maori tradition vs modern individual will
(if you want romance focus)
The Piano (1993)
passion clashing with cultural constraints
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
Inuit legend and community drama in native language
(if slow pace frustrates)
DNA · twelve axes

The reading.

Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.

Mood · HeavyCosy
Pacing · Slow-burnKinetic
Intensity · GentleExtreme
Weirdness · ConventionalSurreal
Hope · NihilisticRedemptive
Stakes · IntimateEpic
Humour · NoneBroad
Reality · GroundedFantastical
Density · SparseTwisty
Warmth · ColdTender
Auteur · TransparentSignature
Your take
Rate it
star-clip-1-0star-clip-2-0star-clip-3-0star-clip-4-0star-clip-5-0
React
Discussion

Discussion

cmd enter to post

What does your Movie DNA look like?

Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.

Calibrate yourself