Film Festival 09 - Strength of Water
The Strength of Water
New Zealand/Germany 2009, 86m
Director: Armagan Ballantyne
Festivals: Rotterdam, Berlin 2009
An ineffable unity of loss and renewal, sadness and hope, flows
through this bold and gravely beautiful film. Like her theatre
work, Briar Grace-Smith's original script embeds a mythic realm of
spiritual existence in specific location and commonplace language
and does so with uncanny aptness. With first-time feature director
Armagan Ballantyne, cinematographer Bogumil Godfrejow and a largely
inexperienced cast, she has been blessed with the collaborators to
render that world palpable.
Ten-year-old Kimi and Melody are twins living with their parents
and three siblings on a farm on the Hokianga coast. Together they
deliver eggs around the district - and lavish attention on a
favoured hen they've named Aroha. The arrival of Tai, a teenage
drifter looking to move into the local tapu house that belonged to
his grandfather, precipitates a terrible accident. Kimi must learn
to live without Melody, and Tai must learn to deal with the
hostility of those in the small community who equate him with the
cursed house. Meanwhile Tirea, the lonely teenage girl in whom Kimi
senses a kindred spirit finds fragile understanding with the
outcast Tai. "I'm bad luck," says he. "But when I look at you", she
replies. "I see light". The muted frankness with which the
characters in this film feel out the bonds of connection is
piercingly direct.
I cannot think of another New Zealand film in which the natural
world is such a living entity as this - or in which animal life is
so integral. The lightest of musical scores adds its quiet descant
to nature's ebb and flow to remind us that the most meaningful
messages are often not shouted, but whispered. - Bill Gosden
strengthofwater.com
