Sàidékè Balái (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) (Fantasia Fest 2012)

12 Indigenous tribes are living harmoniously amongst one another in the late-18th/early-19th century in the mountains of central Taiwan, when imperialist Japanese forces invade.

Their harmonious relations are highly aggressive inasmuch as manhood is achieved by cutting off the head of a member of a surrounding tribe.

The conquerors see things differently however and colonize said tribes in order to put them to work maximizing the economic potential of their natural resources.

Decades pass, and a once proud warrior culture is reduced to back breaking poorly paid labour, alcohol abuse, suffocating ethnocentric taunts, and the systematic depletion of their ancestral hunting grounds.

And respect for their traditions is anathema.

Yet the knowledge that rebellion is akin to mass suicide keeps them at bay, until the situation proves too belittling to be endured forever after (no treaties whereby they could maintain their way of life were negotiated and signed).

And a revolt is launched.

The ways in which director Te-Sheng Wei depicts the revolt incontrovertibly turn one's stomach, as the legendary Mona Rudao (Da-Ching, Lin Ching-Tai) and his Mahebu people express their revenge.

Obviously I was cheering for the downtrodden Mahebu but my support was structurally challenged as they massacred every Japanese person in their village.

The challenge being the result of the generation of an internally cathartic traumatic absolutist aesthetic, which chaotically yet rationally glorifies battle while championing the enslaved, accompanied by a feminine voice singing a haunting lugubrious lament, working within and celebrating the traditions of the vanquished, without hesitating to showcase their warlike being.

A being which I'm not used to inductively digesting.

The rest of Sàidékè Balái (Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale) practically answers Camus's cliché contention that the only properly philosophical problem is suicide.

Assuming that's a cliché by now anyways.

And its response heroically illustrates the fearless spiritual will of a fierce uncompromising people, forced to adopt extreme methods, dedicated to their way of life, refusing to passively perish.

As time goes by.