Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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could on film”. 537 This is a more nuanced formulation. The critic’s attempt to
deconstruct Ward’s film by identifying contradictions founders because he is apparently
unfamiliar with the particular mode of documentary sometimes described as “reflexive”
which acknowledges the presence of the filmmaker but still seeks to achieve as accurate
a representation as possible (an important proviso). In this type of documentary:
“Rather than hearing the filmmaker engage solely in an interactive (participatory,
conversational, or interrogative) fashion with other social actors, we now see or hear the
filmmaker also engage in metacommentary, speaking to us less about the historical
world […] than about the process of representation itself”. 538 Elements of this
reflexivity are evident in In Spring for example, in Ward’s off-camera comments to
Niki. Lurking behind Bibrough’s critique is an uneasiness about the subject-matter (a
political sensitivity that had grown in the course of the 1980s), as shown by his
comment: “We are not simply watching a disinterested record of a couple whose
existence has been excluded and marginalised by dominant middle-class pakeha
culture”. 539
Bilbrough does acknowledge one strength of Ward’s approach - the fact that the
avoidance of voice-over allows the viewer to become “more sensitive to body language
as a relatively unmediated source of information about Puhi and Niki”. Bilbrough cites
as an example Niki’s hands, which “do the talking, splaying, clenching, stiffening,
imaging out the physical and psychological aspects of his ‘illness’ for us throughout the
film”. 540 Helen Martin also vividly describes the hands in the film:
Niki’s [hands], flexing, stiff, tensed, eloquently convey his pain and frustration;
Puhi’s gnarled old pieces of leather, working hands, testifying to a life of
physical labour […]. Important in the Ringatu faith is the gesture of the
‘upraised hand’ (that is in fact the translation of the word ‘Ringatu’). The hands
are used ceaselessly during prayer. If Puhi’s hands are invaluable to her as
manual tools they are also of spiritual significance. Niki’s hands are in perfect
537
Ward, “A Documented Account of the Making of In Spring One Plants Alone,” Introduction.
538
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1991) 56.
539
Bilbrough, "In Spring One Plants Alone: Telling the Story," 15-16.
540
Bilbrough, "In Spring One Plants Alone: Telling the Story," 15.