N.Z. film 'satisfying,' also 'inadequate’

Press, 27 September 1982, Page 7

N.Z. film 'satisfying,' also 'inadequate’

By

Diana Dekker

in London

The New Zealand film. “Pictures." has opened in London to mixed reviews. Patrick Gibbs, of the “Daily Telegraph." wrote: "With the acting from Kevin Wilson as Alfred. Peter VereJones as his drunken brother. Helen Moulder and Elizabeth Coulter as their disparate wives equal to all demands, we are left with a very satisfying and thought-pro-voking little 1 film, constructed with an effective economy."

“Pictures." he says, is “small-scale and unstarry, unless the New Zealand landscape. superbly photographed by ’Rory O'Shea, can be considered a star, which I think it can."

Mr Gibbs also referred to the recent season of "Beyond Reasonable Doubt" in London. saying that it had Shown that New Zealand was capable of making "a fully fascinating film on the subject of an unsolved murder."

"The Times" also carried a review, but it was not so complimentary. The reviewer. Geoffrey Brown, said the film had “an interesting factual subject thwarted by inadequate treatment."

"For all the controversy that whirls round the Burtons' photographs, we see disappointingly little of them, and the director. Michael Black (making his feature debut), skirts the subject's various implications (social, political, aesthetic) with flat-footed dialogue and a bland visual style,” he said.

The writer and producer of “Pictures," John O'Shea, in London for the opening of the film, has been very pleased with the publicity it has had. He has been interviewed on London radio and was the subject of an interview on the "Guardian's” film page. The "Guardian" writer Nick Roddick, calls John O'Shea “The father figure of the New Zealand cinema." “For a New Zealand audience, ‘Pictures' is more than

just a disabused look at the country's history. The situation it portrays has close parallels with developments over the last few years.

"Under Muldoon's 'think big' programme of industrial expansion, a similar process of expropriation is under way, with Maori and pakeha land being sold off to multinational companies in search of cheap industrial sites. “Never crude in its depiction of colonial attitudes, the film testifies to O'Shea’s belief that ‘the Maoris are the ones who are going to lead our society.’ In age dominated by the phony rhetoric and Friedmanesque imperatives of thinking big, the Polynesian attitudes are the most useful ones. That a country which someone once described as ‘the place baby Austins go to die' can produce a film like ‘Pictures’ will pome as no surprise to anyone who witnessed the massive protests protests against the 1981 Springbok tour of New Zealand,” said Mr Roddick.