Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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dream of her father and Ethan jousting combines elements of both medieval English
culture and Kiwi culture in that the weapons used by Ethan and Toss’s father are a
possum chain and a shovel – typically New Zealand farming implements. 685 Ward is
clearly concerned with emphasising not only the subjective nature of his images, but
also the mysterious and original ways in which they are used. He seems to be
concerned to distance his work from a familiar New Zealand prejudice that “symbolic”
art is likely to be over-intellectual and excessively European.
New Zealand /Universal Elements
This leads to the question: in what sense then, can Ward be seen as a “New Zealand”
filmmaker? He said of Vigil:
[I did not] consciously set out to make a New Zealand film. I don’t find I easily
identify with the style or tradition of other films made in New Zealand. A lot of
films here come out of a realist tradition, a colloquial realism, tempered by
American genre films – my interest lies elsewhere. I’m looking for pockets of
the outside world which match my own interior vision. I like to pare things
away. 686
He saw himself “first of all as a filmmaker and then as a film maker who films in New
Zealand and happens to know a little bit about the country because I grew up here”. 687
Despite these assertions, Vigil seems on the face of it to be Ward’s most specifically
New Zealand film, with its reticent farming characters, its ubiquitous sheep, its tractor
(with a mind of its own), and the isolated farm setting. These are familiar local icons.
Some of the scenes in the film - the father docking the tails of the sheep and burning the
stillborn lambs, for example - are based on Ward’s own recollections of growing up on
a farm. The autobiographical nature of the film has been discussed in Chapter Two, but
it is worth emphasising that Ward drew deeply not only on the literal details of his
childhood but on deep-level emotional patterns. In Edge of the Earth, he relates Toss’s
character to his childhood fantasies about having a female companion he could play
with, based in part on his sister and in part on his girlfriend. (Interestingly, his sister,
Marianne Chandler, denies that Toss was based on either her or her elder sister, Ingrid,
685 Ward, Lecture to Film Students at Auckland University.
686 Mitchell, "Vincent Ward: The Eloquence of Isolation," 38.
687 "New Zealand Film: Vincent Ward," 14.