ONCE WERE WARRIORS. (1994) BASED ON THE BOOK BY ALAN DUFF.
DIRECTED BY LEE TAMAHORI. STARRING TEMIERA MORRISON AND RENA OWEN.
REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
'Powerful and chilling, with such narrative momentum that we are swept along in the enveloping tragedy of the family's life.'
Roger Ebert.
'A gritty human drama evoking the residual vibrancy of a threatened culture.'
TimeOut.
'Our people once were warriors, but not like you, Jake. They were a people with mana, pride.'
Beth Heke to her husband Jake.
Oh my God oh my God oh my God. This film blew me away, I mean literally blew me away. And I was putting off watching it because I initially didn't like the sound of it. Well, is my face tomato-red right now!
It was so powerful that I completely forgot about the big news of the day, the fact that we here in Ireland are having our first snow since 2010. Well, seriously, feck that for the moment and sit with me while I extol the virtues of this magnificent film to ye all. Trust me, you'll be glad you did. This film is a bloody cracker. I can't praise it highly enough.
Okay, so it's set in Auckland in the 'Nineties and the main family lives in New Zealand's urban Maori community. The area is rough, dog-rough. I mean, we have rough areas here in Dublin, even so-called no-go areas where the police are supposedly afraid to enter, but the town in the film is so rough that even the attack dogs carry pepper spray and flick-knives around with them.
The Heke family live here. Trust me when I say that they are a family in the throes of a severe crisis. Beth is the mother. She's a fine-looking woman, still only young at about thirty-five or six. She has fabulous long brown curly hair, a great body and she's feisty and not afraid to stand up for herself.
She has five children, Nig, Gracie, Boogie, Huata and a fifth little one whose name I forget. (Just looked it up. It's Polly!) Their house is big enough but poorly-furnished and they don't own it anyway. They're renting it from the local council.
Beth loves her children fiercely. She also loves her big strong husband, Jake, who took her away from her family without their blessing when she was only a slip of a girl and gave her, like, a million children to take her mind off her increasingly shitty life.
Jake's just been made redundant when we meet him. He doesn't give a shit because his dole is only seventeen bucks less than his wages, but Beth is upset because she wants them to own their own home one day. 'It's hard enough to make ends meet as it is,' she tells him.
Jake is a handsome devil. He's tall, dark, well-built and strong as an ox. We see him beating up an even bigger guy in a bar without turning a hair, just to look tough in front of his drinking buddies.
He drinks like a fish, gets into bar brawls just to prove his masculinity then comes home with all his mates, parties some more before beating the shit out of Beth, trashing the house in the process and then raping her.
Poor Beth has to take his abuse because it's just 'a woman's lot,' after all. What is it her friend Mave says to her after one particularly savage beating? 'Well, you know the rules, girl. Keep your mouth shut and your legs open.'
Jake hits her because she gives him lip and answers him back, and also because of his own inferiority complex. He comes from a line of slaves, as he says himself, and he always has a sense that Beth's people are better than his own. His violence is clearly his way of putting her in her place, as he sees it.
Their eldest son Nig, no more than eighteen years old, is filled with anger. He joins a gang called the Toa, and believe me when I say that this is no Mickey Mouse operation, either. These guys, tattooed with the full Maori face-markings, are so tough that they probably wash their balls with barbed wire and hydrochloric acid.
Nig's initiation into the gang, who are his 'family' now, involves his being beaten to a bloody pulp by several gang members. Is it worth it? Nig seems to think so. This is his life now. But what kind of life will it be? Is it really any better than staying at home and being kicked around by Jake?
Boogie, the younger son, is taken away by the State after his parents fail to turn up at one of his court appearances because Beth has been badly battered by Jake and Jake is asleep in bed, oblivious and uncaring to the crisis unfolding in his own household.
In the Boys' Home to which he's been sent, a caring youth advocate teaches Boogie to do the 'haka.' He gets the boy interested in and excited about his Maori culture and introduces Boogie to the possibility that there might be more to life than fucking up and getting taken into 'social welfare custody,' as they call it there.
Gracie, the teenage daughter, is the absolute jewel in this family crown. She's as beautiful as her mother, with fabulous long hair and a pretty face. She's talented too, and writes little stories in a copybook which she then reads to her delighted younger brother and sister, whom she adores and helps to care for.
She evens reads them to Toot, a homeless teenage boy and drug addict who lives in a burnt-out car under a bridge in a junkyard. The grinding poverty is evident everywhere but Gracie, you can tell, is hoping to make something of herself.
Unlike her mother, is the unspoken comparison, her mother who got knocked up and was then trapped into a life of minding kids and dodging the blows from her drunken brute of a husband. Gracie is kind and loving and talented. There must be something better out there for someone so special, so exceptional in every way.
But Gracie's youth and beauty proves to be her undoing, but this is in no way her fault. A despicable act is perpetrated against her that will shake- and maybe even break- the Heke family up once and for all. Will Beth, the protective mother-hen who's trapped by her own circumstances, be strong enough to do what's needed to fix her family...?
The film reminds me of Roddy Doyle's FAMILY, a four-part drama serial that kept Irish people glued to their tellies back in the early 'Nineties. We only had the two channels back then, RTEs 1 and 2, so if anything good was on you could practically guarantee that everyone you knew would be watching it as well. It was the talk of the water cooler all the next day at everyone's work.
ONCE WERE WARRIORS is out now on Blu-Ray for the first time courtesy of SECOND SIGHT FILMS. It includes a great special feature, a documentary looking back on the film's impact as well as re-uniting the cast twenty years later.
It also has an interview with director Lee Tamahori, who has DIE ANOTHER DAY and THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE to his credit as well. Well, he should be very proud indeed of ONCE WERE WARRIORS. It's a powerhouse of a film that, quite apart from anything else, makes you really want to learn more about the fascinating and ultra-musical Maori culture and, now that I've seen it, I know I won't forget it.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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