Mischievous Muru is about more than a raid
Muru
(M, 104 mins)
Directed by Tearepa Kahi
★★★★
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
On October 15 and 16, 2007, armed police raided a number of properties in and around the town of Rūātoki, in the eastern part of Te Ika-a-Māui.
A group of residents had been under surveillance for over a year. The police believed that they were a part of a ‘‘terrorist cell’’ who planned to take control of a part of Te Urewera.
No shots were fired, no one was injured or killed and a total of 18 people were arrested. Eventually – some five years later – four men went to trial on various firearms and other charges.
There have been a couple of documentaries made about the 2007 raids – Errol Wright and
Abi King-Jones’ Operation 8 is especially good. It is still available to watch on the Beamafilm platform and to rent at Alice’s and Aro Video at least – but no one has attempted to make a feature film of the events. They still haven’t.
Despite what you may have read, in the notes in the New Zealand International Film Festival catalogue and the synopsis – at time of writing – of Muru on the NZ Film Commission’s website, Muru is not a depiction of the events of 2007.
As director Tearepa Kahi told us, before Muru played at the opening night of the NZIFF in Wellington, Muru is a ‘‘response’’, not a recreation.
This is not another Out Of The Blue or Bad Blood. Muru is not an entry in Aotearoa’s small, but terrific tradition of making films based on real-life tragedies.
Muru has more in common with Geoff Murphy’s Utu, or Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs. Muru is a provocative, occasionally aggravating and mostly absolutely bloody brilliant piece of writing, made into a film that ticks every box as a political thriller, as an occasional action movie and as a drama of violence unfolding in a small town. It is a fictional story, but one that brushes up against actual events, characters and possibilities in a way that occasionally blurs the line on where the ‘‘inspiration’’ ends and imagination takes over.
In fact, even calling Muru a ‘‘response’’ to the 2007 raids is maybe misleading. It seems to me that Tearepa Kahi and his film are ‘‘responding’’ to a century of conflict, harassment and misunderstanding between Tūhoe and various governments. And that Muru is very specifically inspired by the raids of April 1916, when the leader and prophet Rua Kēnana was arrested by heavily armed police at the settlement of Maungapōhatu. Guns were drawn that day, there was a firefight and at least two men were killed. Anyone who has watched the trailer for Muru will know it is not a spoiler to say, that despite the present-day setting, events in the film have more in common with what happened in 1916, than in 2007.
What Tearepa Kahi has achieved here is poetic and wildly clever. The performances and technical credits – Fred Renata’s cinematography especially – are all at a level that will guarantee international sales. But Muru also has a very local mischievousness and ingenuity to it that I reckon Tame Iti – playing a projection of himself here – must have appreciated.
It is inevitable that many people will watch Muru and believe they have seen a representation of ‘‘what really happened’’. And they will be wrong. Muru is not a film ‘‘of’’ the raids of 2007.
But as a response to a far longer history – and as an acknowledgement that history is as much a part of Tūhoe today, as if it happened last week – Muru is a hell of a ride. It will be vilified by people who fail to understand – and probably celebrated by the same.
Tūhoe, I imagine, are used to that.
❚ After advance screenings in select cinemas, Muru will open nationwide on September 1.