Utu Redux at the film festival

    Elena is a big fan of film festivals.
    Because she is, Josep, his cousin Elena and I boarded a train at the Melling Station and took it to Wellington where we met up with her so we could attend the opening night of this year's New Zealand International Film Festival to see Utu Redux, the restored version of director Geoff Murphy's widely acclaimed 1983 movie Utu.
    It was an excellent film but I found myself equally intrigued by the reactions of the audience crowded into the Embassy Theater to watch the movie. Those that attended that opening night showing were clearly proud of this movie, which is a fictionalized account of what are often referred to as the Land Wars between European settlers and Maori. Those wars were brutal; so brutal that thousands of men, women and children died during them. The Maori were fierce fighters and did not believe in taking prisoners. The British treated them as savages and seldom took prisoners themselves. The result was wholesale slaughter on both sides. So many people died, in fact, that Queen Victoria demanded that a peace be negotiated and the wars ended.
    That part of their collective history is not, I don't believe, what drew audience members - both Pakeha and Maori - to see this film on opening night, however. They came, I think, because this was a major film made by a Kiwi without the intrusion - is that the right word? - of Hollywood. It was written by New Zealanders, filmed by New Zealanders, produced by New Zealanders, filmed in New Zealand and starred New Zealanders. It was even financed by New Zealanders and while that may not seem like such a big deal today it certainly was in 1983.
    The film takes its name - Utu - from a Maori word meaning "restoring the balance" or "reciprocation for an act either friendly or unfriendly."
    In the film that concept leads to revenge when Te Wheke, the main Maori character, returns to his village to find that it has been wiped out by British soldiers who, apparently, mistook it for a rebel camp. At the time Te Wheke is serving with the British army as a corporal. Upon seeing the massacre of his friends and family he immediately vows revenge, renounces his ties to the British and wages war against not only the army but against all colonials who, he believes, bear a collective guilt for the murder of his people.
     I won't say more about the film in case you ever have a chance to see it, but I will say that the audience clapped and cheered throughout the showing. They even applauded both the opening and closing credits and as they were filing out of the theater once the film had ended they talked excitedly about it. A few were critical of its musical score, a few others thought it was perhaps too violent but those were comments made only in passing by men and women who clearly had not been disappointed by what they had seen.
    It made for an interesting night.