“The Wind and the Reckoning” is most interesting because it seems to be one of the first Hawaiian language film with international distribution, but while it tells a story worth knowing, the acting is uneven and there are other questionable choices made by this production.

Swiss-born director David L. Cunningham was raised in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii and has directed the 2001 “To End All Wars” and the 2006  TV miniseries “The Path to 9/11.” His parents were ordained ministers Pentecostal Assemblies of God denomination and the founders of Youth With A Mission and the University of the Nations.  He also studied film and graduated from the University of Southern California. He is schooled in faith and feeling and the film, “The Wind and the Reckoning” seems to be made with earnest intent.

Writer John Fusco has made a name for himself with his Westerns such as the 1988 “Young Guns,” the 1990 “Young Guns II,” the 2004 “Hidalgo, the 2002 animated Western ” Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron” and the 2019 “The Highwaymen.” “The Wind and the Reckoning” is something of a Western, focusing on a Hawaiian cowboy, called Ko’olau and played by Jason Scott Lee.

The year is 1893. With the Hawaiian aristocracy overthrown and the Kingdom of Hawaii now under the control of Hawaii-based citizens of the United States, the new government run by White people comes down hard on Native Hawaiians who contract leprosy. Native Hawaiians are forcibly gathered up and permanently banished to a leper colony on the island of Moloka’i, now known as “the island of the living grave.” Our hero,Ko’olau, a local cowboy and his young son Kalei (Kahiau Perreira) have contracted the disease, and with his wife Pi’illani (Lindsay Watson) refused to leave Kauai.

According to Pi’ilani, “His name meant Stand Against the Wind.” And while this script pits the noble Native Hawaiians against the White soldiers, Ko’olau tells his son, that while “haole” may mean “without breath” or “without spirit,” “Don’t let hate into your heart my son.”

The film is based on the 1906 “The True Story of Kaluaikoolau,” the published memoirs of Pi’ilani.

Historical Background

The Kingdom of Hawaii which was formed in 1795, but Queen Lil’uokalani came to the throne in 1891 and was overthrown by the Committee of Safety. It would be an independent republic until the US annexed it on 4 July 1893. But the year 1893 also saw an outbreak of leprosy. Under the new government, all Native Hawaiians who contracted leprosy were permanently removed to the island of Moloka’i. Also known as Hansen’s disease, leprosy was brought to the islands by outsiders and the Native Hawaiians had little resistance to this new diseased along with smallpox, cholera, measles and the whooping cough. The leper colony on Molokai ran from 1866 to 1969. According to an archived page from VisitMolokai.com, the first documented case of the disease in Hawaii was in 1848. Father Damien had arrived in 1873, but had already died from the disease in 1889.

According to the National Library of Medicine, it was King Kamehameha V who approved the 1865 “Ac Act to Prevent the Spread of Leprosy.” The act empowered the Hawai’i Board of Health “to identify, detain and confine anyone ‘deemed capable of spreading the disease.'” The act also identified land on Molokai set aside for a leprosy settlement while allowing the Board of Health to  proclaim the patients were “civilly dead”  and thus grant “divorce to spouses and the execution of wills.”

So while the film seems to portray a cruel White government enforcing laws against the Native Hawaiians on Kauai, the act by which the colony on Molokai was formed predates the takeover of Hawai’i by the Committee of Safety. The cruelty of the colony, as described by the above links, happened during a time when Hawai’i was still under the rule of their royal family.

I’m not sure if John Fusco was the right choice for this project, considering he wrote Netflix’s “Marco Polo.”

• Marco Polo: A Clash of Cultures
• ‘Marco Polo’ Gets Lost on the Silk Road to Nowhere
• Netflix Marco Polo Series ‘Riddled with Historical Errors’ According to Mongolian Historians
• Netflix’s Marco Polo Left this Reviewer with Pubic-Wig-Related Questions

Writing for USA Today, Robert Bianco wrote, “Marco can’t be accused of stinting on visual splendor. It’s just the script and the cast that might have benefited from some wiser investments.” Reportedly Fusco rode the Silk Road on horse and camel as part of his research.

Bianco also commented:

And so we’re off on another tour of the West’s vision of the Mysterious East, a land filled with blind martial arts teachers, concubines, cobras, philosophers, forbidden love, family feuds, blood and (because this is a streaming outlet), bare breasts. Think Shogun plays Game of Thrones, though even on Thrones, using a gang rape as an excuse for a naked sword fight might be seen as a bridge too far.

There were also problems with Fusco’s “Hidalgo.”

• Hidalgo –From Myth to Movie. 
• Hidalgo: A Film Or Flimflam?

Unlike “Marco Polo,” “The Wind and the Reckoning” is relatively tame and even coy in its depiction of Pi’ilani, even when she is forced to expose herself (and prove she hasn’t contracted Hansen’s disease) to a group of White men. For the latter part of the film, she is attired in what amounts to Victorian undergarments that stay miraculously clean.

For “The Wind and the Reckoning,” Fusco’s script was based on the Ka Moolelo oiaio o Kaluaikoolau by Pi’ilani. According to this link, the story was recorded by journalist Kahikina Sheldon and published in 1906. Fusco’s script was translated into Hawaiian. Cultural experts Leinā‘ala Fruean, Kumu Ka’ea Lyons, Kumu Kauhane Heloca and Kumu Na’auao Viva were consulted for cultural and linguistic accuracy and that seems to indicate the good faith efforts for the production team to get things right.

The Casting

There are problems with the casting. If Ko’olau was born in 1862 (while the US mainland was involved in the American Civil War), if he died sometime during or before 1897, Ko’olau would have been at the oldest about 35 at death. Pi’ilani was born in 1864. She was only two years younger than her husband.

Jason Scott Lee is 56. Lindsay Watson is reportedly 27 years old. That kind of age gap in other films had been criticized, but in this particular film, it seems misleading. In addition, the photo of Ko’olau makes him seem small compared to his wife, but the casting gives the audience the opposite. Watson is five-foot-six, or three inches shorter than Lee and as a couple they present a more traditional ratio between husband and wife, particularly a heroic husband.  Would it be so hard to believe that a small guy could be heroic? I think “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has proven that it is possible. Pi’ilani looks formidable in the photo from the Hawai’i State Archives and not like the lithesome figure that Watson presents.

While it is lovely to see Jason Scott Lee, he is too old for a role in which the female lead is almost thirty years younger and supposedly his “childhood sweetheart.” Moreover, the acting is uneven but some of the White soldiers seem to have been given little more than the role of a bad racist White man. The staging is also sometimes static for the action scenes. Because the banishment to the leper colony on Molokai wasn’t initially instituted under the rule of a White government, the film reducing this tale to one about White men against the Native Hawaiians seems to be counter productive.  The US mainland had already instituted the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and in Hawaii,  leprosy was known as the Chinese sickness (ma`i Pākē).

“The Wind & the Reckoning” received Best Hawaii Film of 2022 from the Hawaii Film Critics Society and The Kameyaay Eagle Award and the Best Narrative Feature Award from the 2022 San Diego International Film Festival. From the 2022 Boston Film Festival, the fil received the Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actress (Lindsay Watson), Best Cinematography (Scott Lee Mason), Best Editing (Kyle Gilbertson) and Best Ensemble Cast.

For more information about Pi’ilani and Ko’olau, including excerpts in Hawaiian, visit the Digital Collections of the Ka’iwakiīloumoku Pacific Indigenous Institute.