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which range from a close-up of his boots walking through the snow (in reality, Tony
William’s boots) to an aerial shot. For a few seconds, the aerial shot reveals the
shadow of a plane, and alert audience members may have assumed that he is being
tracked by an aircraft. Not so; it was merely the camera plane, and there was not
enough footage available, thus making the shadow unavoidable. The spectacular
characteristics of the scenery were exploited by a series of shots which Williams took
from the cockpit of the light camera plane, which flew towards the walls of ice while
he filmed. Williams was trying to obtain the most dramatic footage possible in order
to give the film a memorable and poetic climax. As O’Shea recalled, “that was
extraordinarily difficult and [Tony] had the most awful nightmares after the first time
he tried it, being in front of the plane and flying straight at the wall of ice and
shooting it and then relying on the pilot to climb out of it.” 52 In the final shots of the
film, Manning trudges relentlessly on becoming increasingly exhausted as he makes
his way up the icy slopes. Reaching the crest he pauses for breath and gazes forward.
In front of him is a range of snow covered mountains. Resolved, he steps forward
towards the frozen wastes. While the ending remained open, the odds of Manning
surviving – as a “man alone” – seem virtually nil.
Paul Day once quoted some lines by the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke to
encapsulate the suicide of John Mulgan. They also serve as a comment on the
fictional David Manning, whose likely death in the frozen wastes also seemed equally
self chosen:
And we, who have always
Thought of happiness climbing
Would feel the emotion that almost startles
When happiness falls. 53
The ending of the film seems to aspire to the sublime, in the style of a European art
film; but at the same time has many resonances for a New Zealand viewer, aware of
so many wilderness heroes, ranging from the real life Edmund Hillary and Arawata
Bill to the literary figures created by Mulgan, Denis Glover, Barry Crump and other
writers. There was also O’Shea’s sense of Manning as symbolising the nation itself,
as he struggled forward towards an uncertain future. John O’Shea, too, faced an