Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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Appleby had spent time with Irish workmen and could reproduce quite readily their
Irish accent, which was close to the West Cumbrian one. According to McRae, Hamish
McFarlane(as Griffin) was “keen to learn” and she spent three to four sessions with him
every week. While McFarlane succeeded in maintaining his accent throughout the film,
other actors were not able to do so and as a result, in McRae’s opinion, the film was not
entirely successful in achieving Ward’s aim that all the actors “sounded as if they came
from the same place”. 737 Ward countered this criticism by pointing out that: “We rarely
get any complaints from English people about problems with the accent. Considering
the cast ranged from six-year-old children to 80-year-olds, none of whom were English,
that’s pretty good”. 738
Not only the physical details of the medieval world were carefully researched, but also
medieval notions of the universe. As Peter Hughes notes: “There are three world views
mentioned in the film: the notion of the antipodes; the notion of the underworld; and the
idea that the world was flat. 739 In an interview with Russell Campbell and Miro
Bilbrough, Ward discussed some of these notions, particularly the medieval idea of the
antipodes (literally, “the opposite foot”), which inform the film:
The belief, which I think was Greek and inherited by the medievals, was that
there was a continent at the top of the world, an exact mirror image. And the
medievals believed that here were people who walked on their heads, had one
eye in the centre of their forehead and used one big foot as an umbrella against
the boiling sun […]. In a sense, it is this land they discover, a medieval hell as
envisaged by Bosch, or perhaps a celestial heaven. A land at the opposite end of
the world, only of course it is a land we’re familiar with. The audience
ironically has a knowledge [the characters] don’t have. 740
When the medievals emerge from the tunnel and see what they imagine is the celestial
city – “It must be God’s city. There’s so much light” – their reaction is based on the
logic that if the earth is flat, it has two sides and if there is evil on one side, good must
be on the other. Later they come to believe that what they have seen represents not
737 Lynette Read, interview with Elizabeth McRae, 20 November 2001.
738 O'Brien, "Success Is Being a Good Liar," 12.
739 Hughes, "The Two Ages of the Navigator," 27.
740 Campbell and Bilbrough, "A Dialogue with Discrepancy: Vincent Ward Discusses the Navigator," 10.