Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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divinely directed patterns. Their awareness of the future or a subjective truth behind the
superficial flow of events does not confer on them any authority over the outcome of a
wider adult or predestined narrative”. 891 Thus while Avik perceived Albertine as being
his “soul-mate”, he was unable to prevent their separation when she was taken away
from the hospital.
Michael Wilmington theorised that in Ward’s films there is another recurring character:
- that of “the outsider, the tempter, the traveller from a more civilized world”. In Vigil,
the mysterious stranger is Ethan who upsets the balance between Toss and her mother
and grandfather; in The Navigator, Connor is the traveller to the outside world who
brings the plague back with him. In Map of the Human Heart, “Avik, the happy but
unlucky Inuit, is seduced by the British cartographer Walter, who takes him away to
Montreal, inspires his enlistment in the World Ward Two RAF, and eventually causes
his participation in the Dresden fire-bombing – apocalyptic savagery that destroys
Avik’s lifelong romance with Albertine and sends him home again, prematurely old, all
romance and illusion blasted”. 892
Like most of Ward’s films, Map of the Human Heart has autobiographical elements in
that it owes much to the love story of Ward’s parents, who met in Israel at the end of the
Second World War, as detailed in Chapter One of this thesis. This story – the chance
meeting of exiles who had been uprooted from their homelands – has parallels with the
story of Avik and Albertine in Map of the Human Heart, but unlike his parents’ love
story, there is no “happy ending” and the lovers are never reunited.
Another aspect of the film for which Ward drew from his own experiences is his
nomadic lifestyle and the effect that is has on his relationships, which has resonances
with the separated lovers in the film. “I travel almost continuously, so I’m dislocated
from where I come from and frequently, from the person I’m involved with […], and
it’s that dislocation that I relate to in Map of the Human Heart.” 893 He expanded on this
notion in an article in Stamp:
That nomad thing informs my relationships with people, and it’s really part of
the context of Map of the Human Heart that a lot of contemporary relationships
891 Rayner, "Paradise and Pandemonium," 48.
892 Wilmington, "Firestorm and Dry Ice," 52.
893 Ward quoted in Litson, "Map of Vincent's Heart," 35.