Dean Hamer, Daniel Sousa and Joe Wilson | Aikāne / 2023

loving entanglements

by Douglas Messerli

 

Dean Hamer (screenplay), Dean Hamer, Daniel Sousa and Joe Wilson (directors) Aikāne / 2023

[14 minutes]

 

The term “Aikāne,” so the prologue of this 2023 animated short film tells us, describes an intimate friend of the same sex in the original Hawaiian language. Legendary figures, ruling chiefs, and commoners alike had aikāne as trusted partners, with their obvious references to possible same-sex relationships.    

 

      In this case an ancient Hawaiian leader is seen with his men defeating some early colonialist force; but at the last moment, as the hero stands at the mountain cliff, the final survival takes up his musket and shoots the leader, sending his body over the edge. 

     He falls into the deep ocean waters below, his blood streaming from his body, only to become entangled in the tenacles of a giant octopus.

     In the very next frames, the octopus has been transformed into a handsome young man who leans over the body of the hero, providing him with a nasal elixir, the smell of which helps to bring him back to life. As we awakens to observe the beautiful young man, a smile immediately transforms his face.

     Down at the beach where the sand crabs rush from the tides, the young man has a hut, from which we now witness the healed leader emerging, appreciative of his savior. Yet when it looks above to his homeland he sees fires burning, smoke emanating from his former village.

     Our hero picks up his spear and dives into the ocean, but almost immediately a shark hones in upon him, at that very moment the black ink of the octopus enveloping them in order to protect him. The octopus again transmogrifies quickly into his new aikāne, making it clear to us, if not to the film’s hero, that they are one and the same.

  

    Leading the way, his new friend leads him through an underwater passageway safe from the shark, as they gradually make their way into an underground grotto, where the two finally hold

hands and lean forward upon each other’s foreheads, a symbolic kiss of sorts.

      The very next frame shows them sleeping closely next to one another, as our hero awakens to the sound of a horn, a call presumably for help from his community high above in the mountains. Leading him through a sort of jungle enclosure, his new friend shows him a kind of staircase up the mountainside that will presumably lead to the world from which our leader has fallen.

     The stairway is steep and treacherous, but with his friend leading, the hero finally reaches the top and reconnoiters with his community. But at the very moment they are reunited and the two, now close “friends” grasp hands, they look out from above to see a new colonial ship entering their harbor. They all grab their spears and set out on their long boats to the enemy ship.

      Yet their spears are met with canons and guns, the native tribe being immediately overwhelmed. The hero’s friend, on a much smaller tub-like boat, speeds ahead to help in the battle, suddenly being blown into smithereens by the ship’s canon which seems like an evil eye, able to move in any direction it desires.

       A net drags up the body of the leader’s aikāne at the very moment that all the ships canons poke through the body of the vessel, aiming at the natives armed with rudimentary weapons. Long boat after boat is blown out of the water.  

     Floating in as jetsam, the hero now discovers himself back on the very shore where his dearly beloved friend had first rescued him, entering the same hut once more, the mat upon which they once slept together immediately facing him. Taking up the bottle from which his friend first nurtured him, the leader returns to the grotto, filling up in the vessel from its waterfalls.

      Meanwhile, the surviving friend, now being mocked by the ship’s sailors that can only remind one of Christ’s own mockeries by his captives, suffers his situation, the hero, moving forward underwater with white gelatinous octopi-formed figures that look a great deal like spermatozoa, toward the enemy ship.  

      The hero arrives while the drunken sailors sleep, feeding some of the magical elixir to his friend. Just as suddenly aikāne returns to his octopus form, freeing himself from his metal locks, rushing through the tiny enjambment of the door as the hero battles the sailors, setting their ship afire as his octopus friend escapes, pulling out the nails that keep the ship afloat. The captain and the Hawaiian hero battle it out at the very moment that the ship, aflame, is also quickly sinking, his octopi friend now destroying the rest of the ship, bit by bit.

     The leader escapes, only to encounter once again his beautiful young friend, finally the two embracing with a long kiss. It is now clear that the two are more than friends, full lovers which they have long secretly been to one another.

      Now awarded their due by the remaining Hawaiian community, both the hero and aikāne drink of the elixir. They leap anew off the cliff, falling into the ocean waters the dance out a beautiful entanglement that ends in their both becoming octopi, racing after each other through the dark, deep waters.

 

Los Angeles, December 24, 2023

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (December 2023).