Once Were Warriors

by Dennis••0•Posted inFilms

Once Were Warriors [1994]

Director: Lee Tamahori
Actor: Rena Owen, Temuera Morrison, Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell, Julian Arahanga, Taungaroa Emile, Cliff Curtis


.: Synopsis
A very raw and visceral film about Beth (Owen) and Jake (Morrison), two Maori no longer living among their tribe due to the elders disapproving of their union. Beth was a special girl, offered the blessing of the elders, which happens only once a generation, and Jake a descendent of a long line of former slaves. Their life sees high highs and low lows as they live in poverty and general dissatisfaction. They have several children together; Nig (Arahanga), the eldest son, who is reluctantly seeking for opportunities within the local Maori gang. Grace (Kerr-Bell), the eldest daughter, is a young and intelligent girl, and is the only one in the family that shows any academic interest. She’s also the one that takes care of the younger kids. Boogie (Emile) is still a young boy who is basically good at heart but is hanging out with the wrong people. And then there are Polly and Huata, the two youngest kids. They live in dilapidated, government subsidized housing along the highway.

Jake has a violent temper, especially when he drinks, and he drinks a lot, often inviting his friends back to his house to continue the drinking and singing when the bar closes. All the while the kids to lie awake listening to the drunken debauchery downstairs, unable to sleep. Beth is hardly a saint, she drinks, too, and while she’s clever, and generally doesn’t agree with her husband, she’s susceptible to his charms and to the partying, and so eventually gives in and enjoys the debauchery as much as her husband does. She’s dissatisfied with her life, though, and the dissatisfaction deepens when Jake announces he’s quit his job since the dole (social security) pays out only 17 pounds a week less than his wages. She’s what Jake calls a “smart-mouth,” and she regularly gets on his nerves to the point that he severely assaults her, and when she voices her dissatisfaction with him quitting his job, he puts his hands on her.

Severely bruised and beaten up she misses Boogie’s court-date and he is placed in a boy’s home run by a fellow Maori, a strong, old man who teaches him the depth and ways of the tribe’s traditional ways. He even goes so far as teaching him the Maori martial art, dance and songs. Meanwhile, Grace is deepening her connection with her best friend, an orphaned, homeless, Maori boy who lives close by in an abandoned car underneath an overpass.

.: Spoilers
One night, as Jake’s friends have loaded up with liquor and have demolished the house with their partying, one of Jake’s best friends, Bully, who has known Grace all her life, sneaks into her bedroom and rapes her. Grace runs away from home and joins her friend underneath the overpass, smoking weed to forget about their problems, he kisses her, and she misunderstands the gesture as a sexual advance (which it wasn’t) and she freaks out, saying that he’s just like everyone else. She wanders the city for hours while Beth is looking for her (and Jake is once again partying at their house, not really caring that his daughter is gone.) When Grace once again returns to the house, she’s confronted by her father and his friends, all drunk, and “Uncle Bully” asking her for a kiss, like he used to do before he raped her. She refuses, and her father almost assaults her for her disrespect. She runs out when Jake’s friends manage to calm him down, and she goes into the backyard where she hangs herself. When Beth returns Jake dispassionately tells her that Grace came back and went out the back again. When Beth goes into the backyard and discovers Grace hanging from a branch of a tree, Jake is paralysed, and once again his friends are the ones that act, helping Beth cut her down from the tree.

All of this gives Grace enough strength to defy Jake, determining that Grace should be buried on tribal lands. Jake refuses to go back to the tribe, and refuses to attend her funeral. The funeral is very nice, with Boogie and his group performing a special Haka (tribal dance) to commemorate Grace’s passing, and indicating how he’s grown and matured. Jake is at the local bar with Bully and another friend, who both tell him that it’s not too late to attend his daughter’s funeral. He refuses, and instead continues to drink himself into a stupor.

After the funeral, Beth heads home with her children, as well as Grace’s best friend to enjoy some food together. One of the kids asks for Beth to read from Grace’s notebook – a book she carried around in which she wrote her stories, indicating that she wanted to write a book one day. When Beth enthusiastically opens the notebook to read from it, she finds Grace’s final words, explaining how Bully raped her, and how she couldn’t live with what happened. Furious, she lets Nig take her to the bar where Jake is still drinking, to confront Bully. When Bully denies the accusations, Jake angrily intervenes on behalf of his friend Bully. Nig steps in, protecting his mother from his father and urging him to read the book. When Jake does so he realises the truth and takes out his wrath on Bully. (Not pretty.)

All of this gives Beth enough strength to finally leave her bleak life, take her children and return to the tribe.

.: Opinion
It doesn’t happen very often that I write such a synopsis of the entire film, and it should be taken as a good indication of how moved I was by this tale. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of the film isn’t very good, especially the acting and dialogue, but the story is a moving one. Rena Owen has a weird gift to appear stunningly beautiful, yet damaged and worn out at the same time. Temuera Morrison is tough and pathetic, and Julian Arahanga is a big paradox as well. There’s no hero in this film, no person that you could offer your support to, which makes the watch rather unpleasant, even without all the acts of depravity and violence.

Also, from what I understand, the lower-class Maori in New Zealand often live in poverty and without much chance of escaping the violence, poverty and alcoholism that runs rampant through their society. Interestingly enough, these are the same problems that the Aboriginals deal with in Australia. Coincidence? Probably not.

20081125 – Stuff

by Dennis••3•Posted inJournal

In no particular order:

I really like my jacket.
My throat is on fire.
It’s really fucking cold outside.
I’ve lost confidence in the load-bearing capability of my new shelf.
I’m really happy with Dennis’ 4Gb USB stick gift.
I think it’s unfortunate that many television shows are nearing the end of the season.
My shoulder feels better.
I miss my father.
I miss my mother more.
Gaming hasn’t been going so well. It needs an intervention.
Insurance companies are predominantly run by assholes.
“Is the law of our side, if I say aye?”
How do astrologers explain the wildly different lives that single-celled twins sometimes lead? Frauds, all of them.
I’m digging the AH salads. Especially the Italian chicken salad.
“With your kiss my life begins.”

Dystopian Visions

by Dennis••4•Posted inJournal

Having finished Gears of War (GoW) recently and getting ready to try on Fallout 3, I’m confronted by my own predisposition towards dystopian settings. GoW takes place on the fictitious world of Sera, which mirrors Earth very closely. Humans on Sera are technically and culturally very advanced until the Emergencehits, the day the so-called Locustemerge from their underground home to aggressively pursue the destruction of mankind on Sera.

The Locust are an aggressive, subterranean mostly humanoids race, who are technologically advanced, but seem to focus more on crude bionics and energy harnessing weaponry than on armaments and projectile weapons like humans do. They also seem to display a hive-mind – which seems to be a must-have if you want to succeed in a role of an evil race of creatures bent on destroying the human race. They manage to take everyone by surprise and level, well, pretty much everything, driving humanity back to Jacinto Plateau, a mountainous area of Sera where the bedrock is too think for the Locust to burrow through, essentially allowing for a small safe-haven, and a base for reconquering the ravaged world.

And ravaged it is. The game takes place 14 years after Emergence Day. So-called Stranded, humans living and surviving outside the safety of Jacinto Plateau, are notoriously aggressive towards outsiders and wage a near constant battle against the Locust – a fight that intensifies when night falls, as the darkness allows for the Kryll to come out; a severely light-sensitive form of hyper-aggressive, carnivorous bats, under the control of the Locust.

Every resource is scarce, and and everything is destroyed. Corpses still line the streets, as do burn out cars, destroyed buildings and looted shops. Weeds and plants are slowly taking over the broken and littered streets of urban centers, and city utilities like gas-, electricity- and waterlines are leaking and broken, or highly unreliable. To get an idea of the imagery, one only has to look at the screenshots of the game, or look at the concept art in Destroyed Beauty.)

This setting is so incredibly harsh that there’s almost no redeeming qualities. Most of the time, a dystopia still has some sort of structure, an oppressive government, like the one in Children of Men, or Aeon Flux. Shadowrun is a dystopia, but life goes on. Mad Max is a dystopia, and there are definite hints that not everything is a lawless, wasteland hell. But when it comes to GoW, it seems that Sera is just covered with misery and destruction. The hopelessness of finding peace or perhaps some structure really wore me down while playing this game. I like dystopiae, but there has to be something to cling on to, and the idea of the Jacinto Plateau – the GoW version of the Matrix’ Zion, is just not enough. (Or it’s not highlighted enough in the game.)

Anyway, as strange as it might sound, I find the idea of a dystopia appealing. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but it surely has something to do with the idea that, compared to the world we live in now, the mediocrity is removed, at least superficially. The challenge is no longer to make it through a day without dying inside, but more to make it through a day without dying. Having said that, I fully realise that most dystopiae actually rely heavily on the mediocre; the wageslaves, the sheep. So when I think of life in a dystopia, I immediately assume that somehow I’d live outside of the norm, the chances of which are laughably small. I guess that’s my superhero fantasy to think that somehow I’d amount to more if faced with heavy adversity. Perhaps it’s the idea that you can be proud of just being, that being by itself is an accomplishment to be proud of. The survivalist mentality. That Darwinism determines that you either strife to excellence or be scooped out of the gene pool.

One of the appealing elements of an “apocalyptic dystopia,” one where a sudden, surprise event changes the rules forever, is that it acts like a great equaliser. A devastating nuclear war (Fallout, Jericho, Terminator), hostile alien invasion (War of the World, Independence Day, 28 Days Later, Gears of War), or even something climactic that leads to complete social breakdown, like The Day After Tomorrow, does away with many of the priorities we cling to now. It’s less important which stocks you have in your portfolio, than it is to have a Grand Cherokee. It’s less important that you have connections at Dorsia so you can get a friday-night table on short notice, than it is to know people that can build a house, supply you with weapons, or know how to hunt or grow crops. It does away with many of the frivolities that we’ve become obsessed with.

It begs the question how you prepare for something like this. (Or even if you should, but I’m ignoring that one right now.) It will either happen suddenly (viral outbreak, alien invasion, etc.) and then your preparations might be for naught, or it’s going to be a slow social deconstruction, in which case you have plenty of time to prepare and adjust for it. Perhaps we’re already in a downward spiral that will lead us to the brink of social collapse. Perhaps we should start digging holes to create bunkers, stock up on water, canned foods and ammunition. Perhaps the economic breakdown of society, which, arguably, has already started, will be the prelude to our own dystopia. Time for a quick stop at the grocery store to stock up. Mental note; I need tin-foil to protect my brain, in case the aliens come.

[Subject shamelessly stolen from Pistons.]

Physiotherapist

by Dennis••2•Posted inJournal

Due to some trouble with my shoulder lately, I went to the doctor, who suspected I might have a torn ligament or muscle. She claimed lack of expertise and referred me to a physiotherapist. That guy, Peter, was cool. He was very informative and poked, pushed, pulled and prodded me. He noticed that there was little movement in my first rib. (This is the rib that’s all the way at the top of the ribcage, behind and below the collarbone.) He said it was strange, since it normally means that you also have limited movement, but that wasn’t the case. He suspected that it might be my general limberness that compensated the bruised rib. He did some chiropractic stuff to “release” my first rib to give it more movement. That was hella-interesting and kind of scary at the same time. He also noticed that I had an old break in my collarbone that had already started healing, which was a weird thing to hear. I’ve had some pain there, but never really thought anything of it. So yeah, no heavy exercising for me for a while.

It’s Time I Start Talking

by Dennis••0•Posted inJournal

I decided to talk to someone – a professional. I’m not well. I’m not who I was, or who I could be, who I should be. It’s getting to the point where I can’t keep my worlds separate any longer. I can’t prevent problems in one area from spilling over into other areas. I got an e-mail today which was rather difficult to deal with, and it won’t let me go. I can’t push it aside, and I can’t keep it from throwing off my game at work.

But I am going to steel myself, temper my iron and redouble my efforts to regain control of myself. In the meantime, I will continue improving myself, turning myself into who I want to be, who I know is inside of me.