Page 93 - Sharp Winter 2024

ALITTLE UNDER A CENTURY AGO, GEORGIAN PSYCHOLOGIST
Dimitri Uznadze published an academic paper. It was a study of sounds and symbolism, outlining a theory he christened “the bouba/ kiki effect.” The idea, as proposed by Uznadze, was that humans are hard-wired to associate specific words and sounds with certain shapes. “Bouba,” he said, should call to mind soft, round shapes, while those conjured up by “kiki” tend to be sharper, spikier.
By the late 1920s, German psychologist Wolfgang Köhler had taken Uznadze’s research one step further. Using two new nonsense words — “maluma” and “takete” — Köhler claimed such triggers run deeper than simple shape association, and can actually affect and alter our moods. “Maluma,” he said, was happy, a heartwarming hug of a word. But “takete”? A jarring and jagged sound — likely to evoke feelings of upset, anxiety, and pain.
So what gives? Because every film directed by our latest cover star — an actor, director, writer, and proud New Zealander — is a “maluma” movie. His are as “bouba” a bunch of flicks as a filmmaker could possibly muster; balms of films that range from soul-stirring superhero fare to disarming romantic comedies. There are no dark and stormy nights in their runtimes, nor tortured souls in their scripts. How strange, then, that each of these feel-good titles sprang from the mind of the same individual — a man who, in Hollywood’s long history, has perhaps the most “takete” and “kiki” name of them all.
“Well, I’m a feel-good guy,” says Taika Waititi. “But I don’t think the ‘feel-goodness’ of it all is necessarily unique to me — although it certainly feels as though it’s getting rarer in films. There are a lot of auteurs these days where it’s like: I’ve got to punish audiences
for spending $25 to come and see my vision! We must make them feel terrible!”
Waititi, on the other hand, has always seen cinema as something optimistic. Growing up in a poor area of New Zealand, where he was born to an Ashkenazi mother and Maori father, movie theatres offered the future filmmaker an escape, a place where his spirits could be lifted. And the moments he remembers most fondly, he says, are those of air-punching, whoop-inducing glee — epitomized, for Waititi at least, by the moment Daniel LaRusso crane-kicks Johnny Lawrence at the end of The Karate Kid.
“It’s the triumph of the underdog,” explains the director. “It’s when E.T. comes back to life. It’s the moment Marty McFly’s parents kiss. It’s those moments that are uplifting and make the audience cheer. Look, I love a good depressing European film just as much as the next guy, but I don’t want to watch them all the time. And I quickly let go of them when I do. I think it’s okay to feel good. And I think, more and more nowadays, audiences need to be reminded that life actually is good, and that humans are actually intrinsically good people.”
To that end, Waititi’s latest film ticks every upbeat box. In theatres Nov. 17, Next Goal Wins may be the 48-year-old filmmaker’s first sports movie, but it’s as wholesome as the rest — stuffed with happy-go-lucky chuckles and bearing no barbs upon which moviegoers might be snagged. It tells the true-life tale of the American Samoa national football team which, in 2001, suffered the most land-sliding, laugh-and-point loss in FIFA history. A 2014 documentary detailed the fallout from the game (in which the Australian national team
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“I think, more and more nowadays, audiences need to be reminded that life actually is good, and that humans are actually intrinsically good people.”
FULL LOOK BY GIVENCHY.