Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

250
Seventh Seal (1957) which was also set against the background of medieval responses to
the plague; but some also saw this as derivativeness. Scott Murray’s main criticism of
the film was that
too many images and stylistics in the film are ‘borrowed’ from filmic
predecessors – in particular, Andrei Tarkovskij’s Andrei Rublev (1966) and
Ivanovo Detstvo (Ivan’s Childhood, 1962). The stark close-ups of Griffin, the
wheel over the pit, the very contrast of black clothes against white snow, the
floundering white horse and the final shouting about ‘The bells, the bells’ go
beyond mere homage to an unnerving preferencing of another’s work above
one’s own. (As well, the staging of several scenes, and the theatrical
performances, bespeak the influence of Peter Brook.) 816
It is a common problem faced by art films in New Zealand that they are criticised for
being too European (and too derivatively European), and not sufficiently local. Ward’s
view of national identity is broader, as Brent Lewis notes:
Vincent Ward’s vision for New Zealand is still finding form. Far from narrowly
nationalistic, it is instead couched in universal terms. ‘This is a country that’s
beginning to have values outside pioneering values, values that are not to do
with merely New Zealand colloquialism, but are imaginative and a way of
saying there is not just one way of seeing the world, there are a hundred million
ways, there are as many ways of seeing the world as there are people’. 817
It is notable that the New Zealand filmmakers Ward associated with shared his distrust
of traditional definitions of national identity. The filmmakers in Maynard’s stable all
tended to challenge mainstream notions of New Zealandness. Ward’s choice of setting
for the film – a Celtic village in medieval Cumbria in the north of England - arose from
his interest in and exploration of the Celtic background of his father’s forebears who
had originally come from Ireland. He wrote that his father “often spoke of his Celtic
origins” and finally, at the age of eighty, went back to Ireland to find where his
ancestors came from; but “when he traced the site he found the village had disappeared
and the land was now covered with forest. As he searched through parish records, I
imagined him uncovering medieval manuscripts and therefore it was his voice I heard
816 Scott Murray, ed., Australian Film 1978-1992 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1993) 254.
817 Ward quoted in Lewis, "F&F Special Report," 12.