Utu

If there was a renaissance, or ‘new wave' of NZ film making, then Geoff Murphy was riding it, and ride it he did, tall in the saddle with this vastly ambitious, but sometimes vexing ‘puha western'.

The film's antecedents are clear. Murphy wears his love for Sergio Leone's ‘spaghetti westerns', and the counter cultural attitudes of 1970s Hollywood cinema right on his sleeve. But the unique cultural markers of NZ history poke through all the same, and give the picture a defining sense of uniqueness.

Released in 1983, when memories of Bastion Point and the Springbok Tour were fresh, Utu's mix of unresolved colonial conflict and Murphy's energetic direction promised to be as potent as the double-barreled shot-gun Williamson (Bruno Lawrence) brandishes in the film.

The zeitgeist was ripe for a revisionist, genre-challenging epic made from our own muddy, blood-stained whenua. After the one-two punch of Murphy's Goodbye Pork Pie (1981), then Roger Donaldson's Smash Palace (1982), there was a palpable air of expectation. There was every indication this was going to be a breakthrough picture.

It had scale, action and adventure, played out in the wild places of the volcanic plateau; a big rich symphonic score, composed by John Charles, and performed by our very own national orchestra; it had a bunch of well loved Kiwi thespians, led by the immortal Bruno Lawrence, who revels in the role of the avenging farmer. Most of all it had Anzac Wallace - union delegate turned actor (as the guerilla leader Te Wheke) - and what an impact he made in his short career.

There's much to like in the film, starting with the raw subject matter - which was inspired by real characters and events. A church scene where a Vicar loses his head, and the attack on the Williamson farm are both outstanding sequences, and show what Murphy was capable of. There is great energy and flair in the action scenes.

Critic Pauline Kael in The New Yorker gave Utu a rave review, praising Murphy as a director with an eye for "a deracinated kind of hip lyricism".

There are moments of Murphy's trademark laconic humour, eg. when a post-coital Kura (Tania Bristowe) remarks, "didn't you say your gun could fire seven times without stopping?"

Utu's scale is impressive and Murphy crams it all into lavishly shot and composed scenes: threatened frontiersmen, disgruntled natives, lusty wahine, bible-bashing priests, idealistic upper crust officers, traitorous kupapa, and ... blood-drenched waiata.

Murphy's work had always existed in the space between popular film genres and a specifically Kiwi sensibility. But for the first time, Murphy arguably failed to bridge the gap. Utu's shotgun approach to the great New Zealand (colonial) film ultimately leaves the narrative feeling episodic and tangled in the supplejack.

Yet the New Zealand public responded well; for a time it was New Zealand's second highest grossing film after Murphy's Goodbye Pork Pie. Its revisionist take on 'The New Zealand Wars', coupled with complexly motivated characters (where the good guys aren't necessarily the boys in blue and bad guys aren't always in harakeke skirts), helped rewire popular perceptions of New Zealand history.

Roger Horrocks comments that, "Utu was an uneven film but [it] succeeded in stirring up more discussion of New Zealand history than any recent book has done." (Headlands, MCA, 1992).

Variety reviewed it promisingly at the time: "Murphy has produced powerful images and strong performances. Action sequences, special effects, and visual exploitation of a rugged, high country location in central New Zealand are superb ..." 

But due to criticism from potential overseas buyers and distributors, and at the instigation of producer Don Blakeney, Utu was re-edited in 1985. The consequent version has been referred to as "The Director's Cut", although Geoff Murphy reportedly disavowed it.

The film was shortened by almost 20 minutes and the final scene was intercut throughout the narrative. The consensus on this cut is that it is tidier, but lacks the personality of the original version.

Perhaps due to Utu's mixed fortunes, It would be many years until anyone else seriously essayed the territory of the colonial wars. Unfortunately, Vincent Ward's River Queen walked into some of the same muddy holes. The challenge of large scale period recreations on low Kiwi budgets, and of reconciling story conventions with a sense of historic truth that's both respectful and accurate, remains an unfulfilled one.

Nevertheless in Utu there is a real raw excitement to be had in the risk; at seeing on screen the archetypes of the western turned to post-colonial New Zealand themes for the first time. It is passionate filmmaking and with talents like Murphy, Lawrence and Wallace firing, it's a never-less-than engaging attempt.

"When you make a film about racial conflict, you are living dangerously. When you make a film about racial conflict in a country that congratulates itself on what a successful bi-cultural society it is, the danger heightens." Director Geoff Murphy, on making Utu.