Films Films Films - Part 1

The Wellington Film Festival began on Friday and we have already seen three of the films: Man on Wire, Rain of the Children and In Bruges.  All very different and interesting - and flawed - in their own ways.  

Man on Wire (eponymous Man in picture shown walking between two pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge) opened the festival.  Before seeing this quirky doco, however, we had to endure nearly half and hour of rambling in a half-dead monotone from the Festival organiser.  I know this kind of thing is to be expected, but really! People are there to see the movies.  Best to keep these things short and sweet. 

So, onto the film.  It was an extraordinary insight into the life and goals of Philippe Petit, who, from before the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre where even built, cherished a dream to string a high-wire between them and walk across it.  Naturally, this would involve subterfuge, ingenious planning, and the help of friends and random punters along the way.  It also involved two earlier escapades: walking between the towers of Notre Dame and walking across the Harbour Bridge.  While the act itself was quite breathtaking in its execution - and yes, there was a poignancy to the fact that it was the twin towers - it kind of left me a bit cold. I stress that this wasn't the fault of the film-maker, who put together the material in a thought-provoking, awe-inspiring and often very funny way.  But there was something quite repellent about Petit himself, who quite blithely sacrificed his friendships and relationships to pursue his own pretty self-indulgent goals.  Yes, it was a pretty cool feat - but was the fact his friend had to haul up a badly-thrown steel cable inches at a time from between the towers all through the night less of one?  It was quite a marvel that, even after over 30 years had passed, Petit himself appeared to show no regret for the sacrifices that had been made, while his former childhood friend wept at the memory.  The final shot of the film - no doubt deliberately - summed this up: the vaguely ridiculous figure of a much older Petit walking a wire in his backyard alone, no-one around to applaud or carry him to greater heights.

The next film that we saw was Vincent Ward's doco Rain of the Children, primarily about Te Puhi of Tuhoe who was the focus of one of his earliest films, In Spring One Plants Alone.  Te Puhi had such an effect on him that, years later, Ward sought to document her life and explore further the extraordinary relationship between her and her son, Niki. 

The material traversed by the document was fascinating.  Te Puhi was just 14 when, specially chosen by the Tuhoe prophet Rua Kenana, she married his son, and bore the first of her many children.  Her husband Whatu was, however, arrested with Rua in the police raids on his community at Maungapohatu in 1916.   She later married again and bore many children.  However, she, along with the people of her community, believed that she was cursed and, when an epidemic swept the village, 6 of her children were killed.  Another 5 were taken from her.   

As the film came closer to the present the details of Te Puhi's life and her relationship with her community became sketchier.  Though, unfortunately, the pretentious, meditative shots of Vincent Ward riding around on a horse, driving along gravel roads, or walking through Te Puhi's abandoned house did not.  And this was the main fault with the film, too.  There was too much intrusion from Ward himself.  This mostly didn't prevent the moving and challenging story of Te Puhi coming through, but was an unnecessary distraction.  A similar glory-hogging was evident during the Q&A session, where Ward took all the questions, even one that was very specifically directed at the Tuhoe people behind him.  Ward seemed very naive in terms of the cultural politics of what he was dealing with, such as the quite condescending way he spoke about the 'curse' and the patupaiarehe.  A fascinating but flawed movie.  Though probably my pick so far.

The third movie we saw this weekend was quite different again.  I won a free double-pass to a Festival film and elected to see In Bruges, a film about two Irish hitmen exiled to Bruges after a hit goes wrong written by playwright, Martin McDonagh.  The script was mostly very funny - though there were a few dodgy moments here and there - and no doubt the very pretty medieval city of Bruges is doing an even brisker tourist trade after this. But it all felt a bit inconsequential and lightweight. Not, to quote Seinfeld, that there's anything wrong with that.  But compared to say Pulp Fiction, a film about hitmen that revels in the inconsequential, it just didn't quite pull it off.  OK for fairly mindless amusement though.

Coming soon to a post near you: my musings on Persepolis, The Counterfeiters and (maybe) Welcome to the Sticks.