The film begins in 1819. When we first hear about Jerusha (Julie Andrews), she is a "Christian girl of 22." Later, her tombstone (the spoiler in this message) reads: "1799 - 1834". Do the math: she must have been 19 or 20 in 1819.
This film is an amazing hodgepodge of sometimes good writing and often bad acting. The pre-credit sequence, a narration of how people first came to Hawaii 800 or so years ("30 generations") before, is quite poetic and visually stunning. But much of the acting is stiff and passion-less. (Do look for Carroll O'Connor - very good in a small part at the beginning as Jerusha's father.) The film uses one fascinating (and very effective) device: some scenes end with the first few lines of dialog of the next scene coming up "early", as a way of propelling the film forward. Considering how avant garde this is, it's surprising this has not been used in any other mainstream films -- at least none that I know of. (I recently purchased the DVD because I was interested in seeing the film with captions (CC). It is missing about 15-20 minutes, most of it from the ocean voyage towards the beginning of the film. No special features to speak of.)
This film is an amazing hodgepodge of sometimes good writing and often bad acting. The pre-credit sequence, a narration of how people first came to Hawaii 800 or so years ("30 generations") before, is quite poetic and visually stunning. But much of the acting is stiff and passion-less. (Do look for Carroll O'Connor - very good in a small part at the beginning as Jerusha's father.) The film uses one fascinating (and very effective) device: some scenes end with the first few lines of dialog of the next scene coming up "early", as a way of propelling the film forward. Considering how avant garde this is, it's surprising this has not been used in any other mainstream films -- at least none that I know of. (I recently purchased the DVD because I was interested in seeing the film with captions (CC). It is missing about 15-20 minutes, most of it from the ocean voyage towards the beginning of the film. No special features to speak of.)