History bends in Muru, but the reo remains the same
Iremember returning home after my 30th birthday celebrations and slumping on the sofa, flicking morosely through television channels for the post-midnight feed of international news.
There on the screen was a passenger jet flying into a skyscraper.
I sat, transfixed by the horrors blossoming in bright, crisp daylight on the other side of the world.
The scrolling chyron, relentless as a headache, the quavering voice-over, the eventual collapse of the Twin Towers and those swirling dust clouds swallowing humans, eating up the Lower Manhattan streets.
It was early morning on September 12, 2001, in Aotearoa, and we were all entering a decades-long movie. My role started with a hangover.
As its own movie, Muru, written and directed by Tearepa Kahi, has an excellent cast, gorgeous cinematography, gripping action and, in the best moments, like those between Tūhoe police sergeant ‘‘Taffy’’ Tawharau (Cliff Curtis) and his elderly father, is a beautifully engaging portrait of Māori domestic life.
Muru is also a political action-thriller about authority and reality. It shows us that no authority, certainly not the cops, can out-muscle reality like a well-made movie can.
In this sense, the people of Ngāi Tūhoe, who feature centrally here, have the last laugh. They have turned the story of the 2007 Urewera raids on its upoko (head).
The metaphorical boot is on the other face, and it makes a refreshing change.
Here in 2022, global chaos is so everyday that we forget about how, once upon a time, the US dragged the world into its post-9/11 War on Terror. In 2007, that paranoia landed with a nasty thud in Ruātoki and Tāneatua in Tūhoe country.
The conceit of Muru is beautiful: using the reallife ‘‘anti-terror’’ raids by armed cops to launch a fictional action-thriller; the genre entertainment of a Die Hard-with-tangata-whenua – but tempered with a razor-sharp political conscience, an examination of Māori and Tūhoe historical injustice, and of course, Tame Iti playing ‘‘Tame Iti’’.
Tūhoe controls its own story here – and that of the authorities. Some police are torn between conflicting loyalties, to iwi or to the institution in which they work, or simply between the ever overreaching demands of the job and simple decency; others are violent and paranoid – their worst instincts nurtured in the corrupt system depicted by the film.
This is all fascinating and, with the genrebending, and reality-bending qualities of the story, and the political examination, it’s easy to forget the true star of Muru – te reo Māori.
Tūhoe has kept its own reo alive – and in everyday use.
You can watch this film and thrill to the action, the stunts and the chases, but I was spellbound by the fact the characters were mostly speaking te reo (subtitled in English).
What a tremendous gift it is to see and hear Māori people speaking our language in a cinema. And damn if they aren’t committed to it.
I don’t know if Curtis speaks te reo himself, but as I listened to his kōrero, I could hear him applying the silent ‘‘g’’ of the Tūhoe mita (dialect).
I would crawl over a hundred MCU blockbusters – Blu-ray, extended collector’s edition – to hear the reo wash over me in a theatre, carrying the story with this level of care.
Iti tending his beehives, schoolkids on a bus bickering about Happy Meals, Curtis’ character in his home talking to his dad. A kōhanga. Amarae. A humble whare. The evocation of place and people is so sweet, and all the stronger for being combined with our reo.
My middle age is showing in this preference for the quieter moments, I guess. But as another joint birthday and 9/11 commemoration looms, I’m just happy to have this movie-on-real-life escape from the unrelenting real-life movie of the past two decades.
What a tremendous gift it is to see and hear Ma¯ori people speaking our language in a cinema.