Pike River is a feature film chronicling the key moments of the lives of Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse. Between the day before the coal mining disaster of the title in 2010, during which they lost a husband and a son respectively, until the evening of Jacinda Ardern’s prime ministerial election in 2017.
Seven years is also the time Robert Sarkies and his producer-partner Vicky Pope stated it took them for this film to be realised as they introduced it to the sell-out red-carpeted Auckland premier last night.
The most notable speech from the pōwhiri came from an overwhelmed Rowdy Durbridge – one of the few living miners able to capture what could be described as a deep rooted and twisting anger that the events still stir within the darkest corners of his being.
It was almost as if any conversation surrounding this event was akin to prodding a sleeping monster lying within him, birthed from the deaths and injustices of his experience of reality, and the only thing he could do was stuff it and hope it did not awake and consume him.
It would be fair to say that a coherent gleaning of his words indicated that he both hated this movie and considered it beautiful.
He was additionally facing it for the second time in as many days, with the New Zealand premiere in Greymouth still fresh in his memory from the night before, but clearly not as visceral as the burning truth.
Rowdy is a represented character, but it is not his story. It does not live down the mine or even enter it. It treats it as an undignified regional soul-sucking gaping mouth.
Governments do not like eye sores of this sort, so they seek to cover them up or deny their existence. To the horror of the affected community, both atrocious choices are interwoven throughout, with the clearest depiction of a baddie caricature-hat worn by former prime minister John Key.
Had he been present, and survived Daniel Cleary’s spineless and humiliating portrayal of him, I wonder if he’d have wanted to justify his actions by hoping he may convince viewers to see the events in a different light.
Such was the emotional height reached within the audience, that, had he been present, a lynch mob might have been incited!
Though John Keys’ successor was given perhaps as much as two implied seconds, Jacinda Ardern, playing herself, was given the soft glowing lighting of a deity.
Her cameo was that of the smiling saviour, redeeming dignity to a valuable labour union led community. Why this was painted with such a polarising stroke is hard to understand. I suspect that at the time, those from the affected Greymouth community, probably saw themself as an obvious and easy vote.
They wouldn’t have wanted more beatings whilst bleeding out on the canvas. They, no doubt, voted with raw governmental distrust seeing a morsel of dignity as a better outcome than the starvation and suffering endured through being abandoned and sabotaged for so long.
Political ineptitude is the strongest driving force of this story. Without which, the connected depictions of those who do not do fastidious jobs fastidiously, those who do not resist the pressure to work under inhumane conditions, and those who surrender their young male offspring to undertake daily risks, would have been the damning story catalysts.
Pike River is a credit to the craft of writer Fiona Samuel, who has sensitively drawn together these elements and condensed seven years of fragmented and painful experiences into a poignant single piece of penmanship.
This is a feat that by no means writes itself but must have required a constant revisiting of events and a retention of the strands this mining community was thinly held together by.
Her framework was chronological and reactionary, with a scene-by-scene reliance on either or both the female leads.
Melanie Lynsky and Robyn Malcolm bear the weight of taking us along a journey of shock, determination, hope, distress, aggrievance and outrage. They present refined performances.
One moment delivers the palpable sorrow of a pressed forehead to the driver’s window of an empty van.
Another displays screaming distress transitioning through hysteria into motherly duty as exploding emotions are suppressed to comfort a child.
You can write performances like these, but it is the responsibility of a director to find them lodged within the empathy of performers capable of realising them.
Lynsky and Malcolm competently present an initially brittle developing friendship stemming from the turmoil and relentless pursuit of justice as it is systematically parried by those that manifest a total disregard for their community.
Their heartaches are very much transferred off the screen.
Many supporting roles also contributed significantly to a seamless sense of community.
Notably, Erroll Shand acutely struck the balance between being Sonya’s supportive partner and falling apart at his desperation to help her move on and once again live.
Lucy Lawless delivered a sincere and driven Helen Kelly, and Arthur Ranford imbued measure and pragmatism as the lawyer, Nigel Hampton.
Both the latter two added imperative momentum to the traction of storytelling, whilst Erroll was an integral part of the emotional rollercoaster we rode for just over 2 hours.
It did not feel like a long movie. The scenes are not long. It is not slow burning. It does not drag.
Yes, the film could have been shorter. It could have been edited tighter. Some of the lighter scenes, such as a conversation surrounding fart tennis could have been taken out without detracting from the movie’s impact, but perhaps some audiences want that sort of reprieve.
One could argue that the balance of light and shade was appropriately struck on the grounds that we were living in the aftermath of the tragedy from very early on, yet it was not unfathomably dark nor insincerely light.
This undulation suspended us in a state of being both evoked and engaged. The time passed and we were thoroughly immersed in the subject matter.
For many the story is not over. We’re only just 15 years shy of this event. By the time the screen faded to black, there were still multiple extraneous sentences fading in and out. Appendices if you like.
This is an accepted and reasonably prevalent practice, but in this case, it felt like the story that wanted to be told ran out of scenes to tell them. For whatever creative or dutiful reason this information was deemed necessary, I doubt any viewers were resonating with it as they left the theatre, with so much else still cognitively ruminating.
I left with the visual imagery of the ominous misty mountains and their silence. Silence was extremely rare throughout this piece.
The score was often overbearing and almost distractingly constant. The misty mountains did reoccur, but those moments were sparse treats of atmospheric cinematography – deceptive as an opening perhaps.
The movie does not lean on its visuals, nor does it seek to generate a motif from them – even the mountains.
There were some early moments of visual storytelling, such as the foreshadowing of a ball rumbling down the interior rails of a pool table.
After the initial tragedy a character discovers an unmade bed, and another discovers a draw of abandoned savings. Even within these moments, the latter two are told through character reactions rather than visuals telling the story.
Resultantly, the pool ball did seem a little jarring as a visual style standing/rolling in isolation. Perhaps it was a deliberate single moment that could not repeat nor resurface just as the miners could not. Only those that loved them could remain in focus, and so it is.
Pike River relies on deeply tragic events and characters spun out of control by them. It succeeds tremendously in this manner, and though there is a righteous anger simmering and boiling throughout, this piece is a tearjerker meticulously opening up a conversation surrounding a shameful chapter of New Zealand’s very recent history.
If you are in touch with an inner sense of the value of human life and if you are triggered by empathy, these will rise within you as you bear witness to the unfolding journey, and you will cry.
If you are not, with the greatest respect, it is your loss.
Giles Wynn
