MAHANA-THE MOVIE

Haare Williams Papakura 1 February 2016

On a Saturday night Haare Williams joined throngs of kids flocking into the small Te Karaka picture Hall.  Some, lucky to have horses tethered the sweaty beasts to the fence outside, a few carried saddles into the hall.  For these youngsters; Brown, Rutene, Ruru, Kerekere, Hitaua, Williams and Ihimaera, Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy were clean cut westerns.  Most, like us from Mangatu and Waituhi walked. Getting home was a fun bit too.

 Culture is a proud driver to have in work and life as it is for Lee Tamahori who used it with deft.  He knows whakapapa.  He knows tikanga.  And he knows the place of te reo as the soul of Aotearoa New Zealand.  I had not met him before our first around the table briefing when I sat between him and Witi Ihimaera, author and the source of Mahana, the movie.  Running through the first reading of the script with cast and crew, Tamahori looked the consummate director.   He expected no less than authenticity from a youthful team.  

Mahana is a story set in Patutahi, a tiny rural village west of Gisborne.   The movie is inspired by Ihimaera’s Bulibasha which traces the shifting fortunes of two rival, shearing families, that highlight their ups and downs in a shifting landscape. 

Temuera Morrison stood off to one side, looking every bit like Tamihana Mahana. He sauntered in late, old hat and boots and greying stubble to match.  With wit, humour and commanding voice he was every bit the patriarch  of  the movie whanau.  Tamihana Poata at that moment had landed.   

This is a yarn about our land and people, their core values about morality, ethics, justice and conservation.  Reverence is there, a component missing in today’s schools.  Stories reveal who we are.  Stories provide a rationale for why we do things the way we do and what shaped us into a modern, vibrant nation.  Mahana is the archetypal tough head of his household who sits at the table and in his saddle sometimes looking tough sometimes scary all the time self-assured.  We see him stuff up too.  Calamity is an element of a good in a story.   The ingredients of a gripping tale are all there; tension, deception, betrayal, drama conflict and reconciliation.

The hero is Ramona with a gentle strength played out by Nancy Bruning who bears the lines of anguish on her face.  Ramona, mother with her restorative soul holds her children close.  Her strength and devotion is comforting in the ongoing feud. Nancy Bruning portrays wahine toa, the fine but fragile attributes of a woman with inner strength so like Ngati Porou women.  Morrison strikes gold with a stellar performance, arguably his best.   He is patriarchal.  Mature.  He is also fresh.  His best is yet to come. 

 The gang is typical of shearing gangs whose reputation was built around the speed of the hand piece.   My dad, Te Wehinga was a shearer of note in Turanganui-a-Kiwa.  He did not have to go looking for contracts.  They found him.  His three sons were noted shearers too.  I was at Teachers College.  It made him miserable if one of his shearers mishandled the confused animals.  These are post war years when Maori found fellowship in gangs or whanau with its own coterie of values  for boundaries within whanau kin groups. Many of his generation were still shell-shocked by war.  Some returned to find the festering sores for tribal lands after fighting so valiantly for king and country.  Many struggled to keep their families. 

Maori were also in the freezing industry, forestry and on waterfronts.  They were also building homes, highways and bridges. With their relative prosperity, they were able to invest, build homes and  buy motor vehicles popular models were the 39 Chevy and the 39 V8 Ford.  These jobs powered social mobility.  It was Maori, in the main who carried the country upon their backs towards another millennium.  They hardly, if ever merit a mention by public commentators. 

The post war years saw the emergence of Maori seeking work.  Set against this backdrop they made the social shift from the nurtured background of rural New Zealand to an urban setting.  Maori entered the professional work force essentially as teachers and nurses.  The seventies ushered in major social, cultural, economic and political changes.  It was a cultural and political watershed for Maori society with increasing activism.  Maori challenged government over its neglect for the 130 years before.  A new wave of Maori leaders emerged  from the relatively polite concerns voiced publicly by pre-war Maori leaders, now replaced by an assertive, confrontational voice in which the institutions of the modern state: parliament, education, courts and the media were held to account. The vanguard for this shift was a younger urban educated Maori who argued for justice. They gained support from iwi based Maori like Tuaiwa Rickard, Whina Cooper, Titewhai Harawira, and university based intellectuals in Pat Hohepa and Ranginui Walker.

Then there was the urban relocation with its consequences of social dislocation.  Waitangi was the hot call of the seventies.  Matiu Rata was a senior minister in Kirk’s government.  Kirk sent two frigates to Mururoa and stopped a Springboks tour. Small boats halted two US warships in their tracks in mid- Waitemata.  Whina Cooper led lobbyists to the steps of parliament with a list of grievances.  Dick Scott wrote ‘Ask that Mountain’ and Judith Binney Redemption Song. The hit-word of the seventies educational lexicon was ‘biculturalism.’ 

By the mid-seventies, New Zealanders did not consider marae-based arts as art at all. That changed quickly when The New Zealand Artists and Writers Association in 1973 met for the first time.  They converged as strangers at Tukaki in Te Kaha as disparate carvers and weavers, artists and writers, poets and philosophers, dancers, musicians and music makers, architects and film makers.  Amongst them were luminaries like Hone Taiapa, Ngoingoi Pewhairangi, Wiremu Parker, Hone Tuwhare, Ralph Hotere, Harry Dansey, Katerina Mataira and others.  And the list continues to grow. The Association influenced the decision to take Te Maori; a milestone in the Maori cultural renaissance showcasing traditional Maori arts was taken to a world stage.  This was only one part of a burgeoning Maori nationalism and culture that gathered momentum that politicised contemporary Maori artists.

Within this cultural resurgence we saw a new wave of Maori film-makers flex their cinematic muscle in Barry Barclay, Don Selwyn and Larry Parr followed by Merata Mita, Taika Waititi and Lee Tamahori.  They directed movies which allowed a muted Maori voice to be heard before a largely uniformed public.  What is especially important is Maori telling their own story and communicating it to a receptive world.

 Yes, I applaud the Dalmatians in wine-making, the Dutch in farming, Chinese in the goldfields, Indians in marketing and Pasifika in work.  But!  But, have we given a second thought to a group that built a culture for work, who in the 50s-60s-70s became a veritable back for building this nation.  They are the forgotten generation of our rural and industrial culture. They prospered yes, and so did the nation.  That prosperity however came to a sudden stop when the searing blades of Rogernomics with privatisation, asset sales and the free market theology kicked in.  Dole queues got longer and the poor got poorer. 

We talk a lot these days about Maori youth being disconnected from their origins but this is also true of Pakeha kids.  Many of our kids don’t hear their own stories so how can they own them?  How can they learn that they were never born to fail?  Younger generations need to hear stories of dads and mums, uncles, aunts, and grans all the way along a whakapapa trail and know why they too are heroes.  The Maori world is littered with great men and women.  We have something no-one else has.  Maori culture is what attracts long queues of tourists to our shores.  It is after all, a major contributor to the uniqueness that is Aotearoa New Zealand. 

 In the closing minutes of Mahana, we see so much wairua (living spirit) that I glowed with pride for the way the script binds characters and actions to a unified climax.  My favourite scene is ... e hika ma, you’ll just have to see this movie.  Our kids, Maori and Pakeha will love Mahana. You too will stand, salute and applaud when the credits roll. 

Aroha is a winner.