A boring and pretentious movie about a boring and pretentious movie maker (yawn)

Early in New Zealand film making, or at least early from my point of view (the early '80s) there was a trend to making deadly boring and pretentious films and call them deep. Unfortunately for the industry, Vigil, an early example of this type, was a hit with the critics and up and down the country film makers tried to emulate it.

For me, until I married a film maker, NZ movies were a gloomy no-go zone. Let's face it, even the good ones are seldom a laugh a minute - The Piano, Once Were Warriors, even Whale Rider.

So here we have The Russion Snark, a boring pretentious movie, a throw back to 1983, about a boring pretentious film maker - and the critics don't seem to have learned much - they like it!

1. If you're making a movie about something boring it has to be interesting, or at least funny. There's nothing funny about this movie.

2. Main characters, no matter how flawed, need to have some humanity, Misha (the pretentious Russian film maker) is childish, humourless, self centred, lazy, deluded and immoral.

3. Characters must be believable - Misha's foray into petty crime makes no sense, and his "redemption" at the end comes out of nowhere. We absolutely do not believe this is the same character.

4. His beautiful wife, who has put up with him for a long time, deserves, when she leaves him, better than the writers deliver. When she goes back to him it's a kind of defeat. We don't believe he's a better man.

5. When they sail off into the sunset nothing has been achieved, unless you believe Misha's a better person (yeah, right!) - to me it seems certain the whole sorry mess is due to be repeated at another location.

6. Most of the movie is Misha staring gloomily into nothing, Misha's awful black and white movie, and Misha groaning on about art and meaninglessness. The whole plot (such as it is) is crammed into the last quarter.

There are two good things - the black and white photography is terrific (just FARRRRRRR too much of it) and the actress playing Misha's wife Nadia is mesmerisingly beautiful.

Boy - a deserved hit

I recently saw Boy. This New Zealand film has proven a huge hit. Deservedly.

New Zealand movies tend to be gloomy, portentious, political or depressing. Not Boy. Even though it's a movie set on the East Coast in a Maori community there is no politics on display and only a tangential note that these people are poor. And, let's face it, poverty is relative. At one point the kids (who have been left alone in the care of their 11 year old cousin for a week) complain that they're having crayfish for dinner again!

The film is laugh-out-loud funny at the beginning as Boy introduces us to his interesting life, but after the appearance of his immature and irresponsible father things become more ambiguous. On the face of it his dad should alleviate Boy's responsibility for the kids while his gran is away. But he proves to be a burden. At first Boy and his dad are great mates - his dad has the mental and emotional maturity of an 11 year old after all - but gradually and with great subtlety the film's director (Taika Waititi, who plays the dad) reveals Boy's disillusionment.

I have seen some of Taika Waititi's work before (although not Eagle vs Shark his first feature) and I was very pleasantly surprised by Boy. I was expecting something much less mature and well developed, or something much angrier and more political. The film invites comparisons with Whale Rider (it is set in an almost identical community and the young protagonist is in almost the same situation) but Whale Rider was very much about the demise of Maori culture and its revival, while Boy is much more personal about the particular relationships in this family which could almost be any family with a drop kick dad and a dead too young mother. Although I enjoyed Whale Rider, I think I prefer not to be sledge hammered by a message.

Another thing I enjoyed was that the ending was mildly reassuring. The dad and his sons had a measure of reconciliation, but we knew that Boy no longer hero worshipped him. There was no violent blood bath (Once were Warriors) and no contrived happy every after (Whale Rider). These were just people learning to get on. (BTW the three main performances are excellent, especially the two young actors playing the sons.)

A sign, to me, of a quality film maker - there is a character called "Weirdo" in this movie. In any other NZ movie he would have been sinister and/or dangerous. A pedophile at the very least. Here he is just a gentle mentor to Boy's troubled little brother.