DIRECTED by Wei Te-sheng (the 2008 Asian blockbuster “Cape No. 7”), “Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale,” which cost US$23 million, is reputedly the most expensive Taiwanese film ever made. The film, released on the Chinese mainland this weekend, is a two-hour abridgement of the original four-hour-and-40-minute version.

    Its story is based on the little-known Wushe Incident in 1930, when 300 warriors of the Seediq, an aboriginal people centered in Taiwan’s interior highlands, rose up against their Japanese oppressors. A brief historical preface explains that in 1895, the island of Taiwan was ceded by China to Japan, which subdued the native population and turned them into demoralized, alcoholic slaves. Steeped in mysticism, tribal folklore and Asian machismo, the film is a bloodbath that fetishizes the machete as the ultimate human slicing machine.

    The Seediq believed that “a true man dies on the battlefield,” that anyone who tried to enter the heavenly hunting ground without blood on his hands would be turned away, declares a solemn narrator. The ideal Seediq male, Mouna Rudo (Lin Ching-tai), a tribal chief, is a wise, fearless warrior who heeds ancient traditions. The youthful Mouna (played by Da Ching) is shown receiving a painful facial tattoo certifying his first decapitation. The ritual makes him a Seediq Bale, a hero able to cross a rainbow bridge to the ancestral mountain summit.

    A scene of a mass suicide of Seediq wives portrays the ideal Seediq woman as a mother who would hang herself and send her sons to fight and die rather than be a burden on her husband during wartime.

    Despite its gore, “Seediq Bale” doesn’t feel especially visceral. Maybe it’s Ricky Ho’s wistful, swooning music that strongly echoes James Horner’s score for “Titanic.” Maybe it’s the rainbows too frequently glimpsed in the region’s misty mountains and waterfalls.

    In the incident that ignites the revolt, an abusive Japanese policeman is nearly beaten to death. Mouna Rudo, who had advised acquiescence to the status quo, is pressured to change his stance. The rebels’ first salvo is a massacre at a Japanese sporting event.

    Like Mel Gibson’s “Apocalypto,” “Seediq Bale” finds honor in savagery. If its Japanese soldiers repeatedly dismiss the Seediq as “savages” (the word is usually spat with contempt), the film admires the purity of their rage and their willingness to die in a tribal culture that believes in the cleansing powers of bloodshed.

    In 2011 it was nominated for the Golden Lion in Venice and scooped six gongs including Best Picture at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards.

    The heroism of the Seediq and the film’s beautiful locations has attracted a wave of indigenous tourism to the east coast of Taiwan where more than 40 Amis aboriginal tribes reside. Taiwan’s tourism authority is looking into opportunities to develop the trend.

    (SD-Agencies)