Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

58
Personal Journey by Sam Neill (1995) posits the notion that New Zealand’s national
cinema is a reflection of our troubled psyche. While Neill and Rymer have drawn
attention to some psychological aspects of New Zealand film, they do not clearly
differentiate between the various manifestations of the “troubled reflection of
ourselves” that they see in so many New Zealand films. The discussion of this aspect is
primarily limited to one strand - the blokey “Man Alone” phenomenon, epitomized by
films such as Smash Palace (Roger Donaldson, 1981) and Bad Blood (Mike Newell,
1981), based on the true story of mass murderer, Stanley Graham. 198 Cinema of Unease
points to John Mulgan’s Man Alone (1939) as being the literary antecedent of this
filmic strand.
Other films cited in A Cinema of Unease as exhibiting a similar atmosphere of unease
include: Bad Blood (Mike Newell, 1981), The Lost Tribe (John Laing, 1985), Sleeping
Dogs (Roger Donaldson, 1977), The Scarecrow (Sam Pillsbury, 1982), The Navigator,
and Smash Palace (Roger Donaldson, 1981). What many of these films have in
common with Romanticism and Expressionism is a subjective point-of-view and a focus
on inner, as well as exterior reality. However, in all these films except Ward’s, the
social dimension of the “Man Alone” tradition seems a more important factor. In
relation to Vigil Neill and Rymer comment: “This sense of the precarious is something
one often feels in New Zealand films. The feeling that something awful is about to
begin”. This is a valid link with other New Zealand films, although the unease evoked
in Vigil can not be so easily related to social or political causes. In addition, the
subjectivity of a film such as The Scarecrow is a matter of first-person narration rather
than the dreamlike states explored by Ward who is interested in areas of the mind
beyond the everyday self.
Brian McDonnell lists a number of other films that might be considered as typical of the
“kiwi Gothic” strain in that they “deal with the dark, troubled side of the New Zealand
character”. They include Skin Deep (Geoff Steven, 1978), Trespasses (Peter Sharp,
1984), Heart of the Stag (Michael Firth, 1984), Jack Be Nimble (Garth Maxwell, 1993),
The God Boy (Murray Reece, 1976), Utu (Geoff Murphy, 1983), Trial Run (Melanie
Read, 1984), Mr Wrong (Gaylene Preston, 1985), The Quiet Earth (Geoff Murphy,
1985), Mauri (Merata Mita, 1988), An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion, 1990), Once
198 Graham’s story and the various literary and screen versions of the story are explored in depth in Jones,
Barbed Wire and Mirrors: Essays on New Zealand Prose 296-312.