1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SEEMINLY ORDINARY PEOPLE WITH EXTRODINARY LIVES., September 12, 2009
This review is from: Rain of the Children [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] (DVD)
There are so many seemingly ordinary people in the world with extrodinary lives. True story. Another great movie from Vincent Ward. Tired of movies following the same ole same ole format. Then this is a movie for you. How women used to be. How far we have come. Puts our own lives in perspective. Definitely worth a look, if you like movies out of the square or film festival type movies. Fantastic ......Vincent..............You rock. !!
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3.0 out of 5 stars
a failure in some ways; acceptable in others, June 24, 2010
This review is from: Rain of the Children [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.4 Import - Australia ] (DVD)
I once got the chance to spend an afternoon with New Zealand filmmaker Vincent Ward, right about the time he was getting ready to roll cameras on "What Dreams May Come." I knew who he was and had been impressed by his visual power (trained as a painter, did you know?), but I had also privately concluded that his movies were uneven. "Map of the Human Heart," was an unexpectedly flukey masterpiece worlds beyond anything he has managed to do before or since. Most of his films are stuffed with visually compelling elements and good premises but typically fall apart in other areas, such as storywise.
Anyhow, I had that afternoon come on business from Porlock but Mr. Ward kept returning to the subject matter of one of his early student films, "In Spring One Plants Alone." See, for a couple of years when he was about 20, Ward went to live with a old Maori woman and her mentally challenged son in the Ureweras and made a film of it. It was obvious that not only had that become THE event in Ward's life, but that the subject matter had continued to haunt him thereafter: in the years since the movie had become available on VHS in the Antipodes, he had learned all sorts of information about the woman and her community till it got to the point where he had come to conclude that he "didn't know s***" about what he had seen, despite having lived two years with them. I guess I should have guessed that sooner or later Ward was going to return to that material. Or at least to the Maoris.
Anyhow, with this film, "Rain of the Children," Ward has returned to this material, to this woman. Big-time. Now middle-aged and possessed of a wealth of revelation and filmic know-how, Ward explores ground he had ignored or only glanced over before with all the power, maturity, and storytelling skills he can muster.
Chiefly, what he didn't know at the time was this woman had a history. She was famous, to an extent. She had been one of the wives of Rua Kenana, a messianic prophet who had emerged among the Maori as a way, I suppose, of dealing with the cultural trauma that white settlers had inflicted on them. Thus Ward, in tracing her story, traces the history of her people to some extent -- especially the religious commune in which she had lived and the massacres she had seen.
What I loved about this was Ward frankly talking to the camera and explaining what moved him, what didn't, and what he was planning to discover. I found this engaging me in the film more than would otherwise have been the case, I feel.
However, I fault the movie for using actors to recreate many of the dramatic scenes. Ward uses many actors not only to play Puhi, but those around here. But all that footage is also intercut with footage of the actual principals. As if that's not bad enough, Ward thinks nothing of jumping backwards and forwards in time in a way that can get quite disorienting, especially when you consider that many of the actors look exactly alike. Are we watching Puhe here, her sister, or Puhe later in life?
In the end, I found it hard to tell everybody apart and keep the story straight enough to know what's going on at all times. In fact, I was confused through most of this movie.
Two other negatives -- which can only be accounted Ward's fault -- are that Ward doesn't lay out his setting very well, imparting a good idea of the Maori culture or even their land. Which is something he easily could have done with his background. You never really get a good look at where they're living: this film seems to move from one facial close-up to another. No, it's like he assumes you know all about the Maori, their land, and their struggles before even beginning. As a result, I think the non-Kiwi viewer is going to feel like he's been plopped plum into the middle of an unfamiliar epic.
But it is still worth watching once, as it is quite moving in parts.
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