Utu Redux

The glorious peak achievement of the new feature film culture that burgeoned here in the 70s, Geoff Murphy’s 1983 Utu is unveiled afresh in its ravishing, pictorial splendour. Here it is, our own turbulent history, transcribed with cinematic élan — and an elegiac, absurdist vision of the devil’s mischief in paradise.

– 2013 New Zealand International Film Festival programme

I was excited and amazed by the restoration process. The work done by Weta Digital on bringing the picture back to life was spectacular. It now looks better than it did the day it was first shown. Park Road Post were no less brilliant in their re-mastering and enhancing of the soundtrack. It’s like a completely new experience — I am proud to have been associated with it.

– Director Geoff Murphy on the 2013 version of Utu

[Geoff Murphy] has an instinct for popular entertainment. He has a deracinated kind of hip lyricism. And they fuse quite miraculously in this epic ... We know the basic story of colonialism from books and movies about other countries, but the ferocity of these skirmishes and raids is played off against an Arcadian beauty that makes your head swim.

– Legendary American critic Pauline Kael in The New Yorker, 15 October 1984

When I saw a copy of it on Māori Television actually, three years ago, and saw it as just a shadow of its former self, which I knew intimately, I was shocked, and decided that we really had to do something about getting it back to how it was.

– Utu cinematographer Graeme Cowley in documentary Revisiting Utu (third clip)