Spring Review: Savage

There are those who say that COVID19 will be the death of cinema. That Netflix has taken its place and soon the web will supplant moviegoing just as it has decimated retail shopping. I am not one of those doomsayers.

Film going has seen off many challenges in the past and will survive, even thrive in the future. There is nothing like leaving the real world for a while, slipping into a darkened room for several hours, making yourself comfortable and waiting for the lights to go down as you flee humdrum every day existence and escape into another world imagined by someone else. Admittedly, pickings have been lean of late with the big studios withholding their major releases. But it is not a total drought and, for the eagle-eyed connoisseur, there are consolations to be had, even if you have to forage for them in this post-pandemic wilderness.

One such gem is Savage a New Zealand movie starring a host of unknowns. I must confess to having a marked bias against local cinema: too often I have given it a chance and been sorely disappointed, walking out of the theatre, shaking my head and speculating as to the motive of the Film Commission for funding such a piece of dreck. Savage is not such a movie. Whilst it is simple, unadorned film making, there is a raw narrative power to this violent sombre tale which makes for compelling viewing. The subject matter is not particularly original: wayward son from an abusive home gets packed off to borstal in the 60s, becomes permanently alienated from his family and finds solace in the brutal bonhomie of gang culture but then comes to question his values and beliefs. At first, you might think it a re-tread of Once Were Warriors but the hero is Pakeha and the focus of the movie is individual and not societal.

I was particularly taken by the opening scene in which we are introduced to the hero in the present day. He is sergeant at arms of the gang, necking Lion Red at a rowdy gang party and dispensing brutal punishment to an errant disciple. Four women arrive and one of them takes a clear shine to the hero. She is a bank manager’s daughter, obviously looking for some rough trade. When the two of them are alone together and start to act on their mutual attraction, the anticipated hook-up does not occur. He just wants to fling her onto the bed and ravish her but she insists on showing and receiving affection. Her displays of tenderness unsettle him and he brushes them off repeatedly, insisting on an animalistic coupling. She gives up, puts her shirt back on and leaves him alone.

At the end of the scene, you realise that our hero is a deeply damaged human being. In particular:

(a) You speculate as to what pain and other horrors he endured to bring him to this state.

(b) You realise that his journey out of the hell in which he finds himself will be freighted with anguish and despair.

The rest of the movie plays out on the above two arcs: you loop back to his childhood and adolescence to see what horrors begot the brutalised gang member and the action moves forward into the future as he acts on his discontent and attempts to begin feeling again.

The movie has a distinctively Kiwi feel but not obtrusively so, the acting is naturalistic, the settings and costuming are authentic not stylised. Even though the subject matter leads you down a well-trodden path, the pulse of the story never flags and the resolution is a most satisfying one. The international reviews have been favourable and I am told the movie was 7 years in the making – time well spent in my view. If this is the future of New Zealand cinema, we are in good shape!

The Spring Review

Mr Jones

On the last weekend in February, I was looking forward to catching up on a number of movies I had meant to see but had somehow missed, including:
Clint Eastwood’s latest, Richard Jewel
New Zealand’s own Jojo Rabbit
The Academy Award Winner, Parasite
Not to mention Birds of Prey staring the incomparably beautiful and talented Margot Robbie!

As matters turned out, I saw none of them. The reason for this was a text I received from a well-known Atrium identity urging me to see Mr Jones which had just opened at the Rialto and a few other arthouse cinemas. Already having a full dance card, I fobbed him off by requesting a review once he had seen it at its premiere in Matakana on Saturday night. True to his word (as you will expect from an Atrium member), the review arrived the next morning. It is short so I reproduce it in full below:

“To whom it may concern, Herewith is the review commissioned on the movie – Mr Jones.
Words fail me – Apocalyptically astoundingly brilliant.
I will NEVER EVER forget this movie.
Go to it – now.
End of review.

Yours faithfully, Garry Wycherley Awakino New Zealand”

Now I have known Garry for many years and can say from personal experience that, not only is he a great bloke with very sound political views (like me, a fan of the Donald), but he also has excellent taste in movies and I seldom differ with his pungently expressed summations of cinematic gems.

Thus it was on one soft summer’s evening that I was found piloting my son’s battered but still very serviceable Hyundai Tucson out of the orange – coned city byways to Newmarket where I purchased at the Rialto one adult ticket (no Kapiti ice cream as I am reducing) and a small bottle of diet ginger beer to see for myself whether the above mentioned movie lived up to the seemingly extravagant billing that the good Mr Wycherley had so emphatically bestowed upon it. I have to admit that he was right. Below I set out in my own words the reasons why.

This is a movie that plays like a spy thriller but is actually closely grounded on established historical fact. The time is the 1930s. The world is in the depths of the Great Depression and it seems as though capitalism has failed. But, under Stalin, the Soviet Union is industrializing rapidly: an economic miracle is apparently occurring. The intelligentsia are beside themselves with lavish praise for the new Russia: this is indeed the way of the future or so they say.

But, in London, an up and coming journalist, Gareth Jones, thinks it is all too good to be true. He has done the numbers and they do not add up. Something is wrong, very wrong. He can feel it in his bones. His suspicions intensify when a fellow journalist based in Moscow rings to tell him that he is about to break a major news story.

Gareth Jones is a man on the make: he was the first Western journalist to interview Hitler by catching a lift with he and Goebbels on Hitler’s private plane during the election. Now he wants to interview Stalin. He speaks fluent Russian, having learnt it from his mother who taught English there before her marriage. With some difficulty, he obtains a visa to Moscow in search of a scoop. When he arrives, he finds that his friend is dead, having been killed in a robbery a few days before. This does not stack up either as he had four bullets in his back, unusually thorough for thieves.

Mr Jones is not impressed by his fellow western journalists in Moscow. They uncritically accept the press releases of the regime and seem more interested in having a good time. One of Stalin’s leading cheerleaders is the resident editor of the New York Times, played with silky menace by the always good Bill Sarsgard. Mr Jones hears rumors of trouble in the countryside but journalists are forbidden to travel outside of Moscow. Through devious means, he contrives to catch a train the Ukraine. What he finds there is at the heart of the movie. You can read about it in the history books but my recommendation is that, like Garry and I, you should see the movie.

You will be on the edge of your seat as we were. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. As large chunks of America flirt with socialism as propounded by the avuncular Bernie Sanders, this movie is a chilling and salutary reminder where that discredited philosophy inevitably takes us. As new generations grow up unaware of the horrors of the past, movies like these are essential to remind us that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

But enough politics. The real reason you should see Mr Jones is that it is rattling good cinema, as compelling as any James Bond or Jason Bourne movie.