Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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except possibly for the ballet tutu which Toss wears in the film, since they both had
ballet lessons as children. She sees Toss’s character as being more like Ward as a
child. 688 ) Arguably, the character of Elizabeth was based on his mother’s
“estrangement from the land” and her “sense of isolation and frustration at this strange
new country”. 689 Ward also acknowledges a New Zealand slant to the film’s theme of
childhood - “a common theme in New Zealand writing”, which he attributes to “the
relative newness of the national identity”. He adds: “Maybe we are attracted to the
theme because New Zealand is so remote that when we venture into the world outside
we do so as innocents”. 690
Nicholas Reid argues that while the themes of childhood and the onset of adult sexuality
are “large and universal”, the film invites a New Zealand reading:
With the possible exception of Bad Blood, this is the first feature-film to convey
the sodden reality of rain-soaked hill-country. Such landscape, an everyday
reality for much of New Zealand’s rural population, is carefully avoided in films
that aim to foster the racier, more attractive image of manageable green fields
[…]. More significantly than this, however, Vigil uses the techniques of poetry
(image and heightened sound) to probe deep into the central myth of rural,
pakeha New Zealand. Here are a people, perched upon an alien land not yet
invested with ancestral legends. They vigorously proclaim their self-sufficiency,
their secularism, their freedom from belief, while the land in fact dominates and
controls them. 691
Certainly there are many images of the natural environment in Vigil that remind us of
this McCahon-esque strain in New Zealand painting - trees whose shape has been
distorted by the wind’s constant buffeting, muddy fields, and barren hills suffering from
years of erosion - reminders of the pioneer’s constant battle against a hostile
environment. As Liz exclaims despairingly, “We can’t stop the hills caving in”.
Merata Mita ascribes Pakeha filmmakers’ interest in depicting “the white man or
woman at odds with his/her environment” as part of a “white neurosis” and points out
688 Lynette Read, interview with Marianne Chandler, 1 October 1999.
689 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 70.
690 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 70.
691 Reid, A Decade of New Zealand Film: Sleeping Dogs to Came a Hot Friday 117.