Red, White and Brass absolutely pitch-perfect
Review
Red, White and Brass (PG, 85 mins) Directed by Damon Fepulea’i
★★★★
Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett
Ayear or so ago, I took a call at the crewing agency I run. A film shooting at Wellington’s Sky Stadium needed an assistant for the next two days to work with the grip department. (Grips are the people on a film set who place and move the cameras. They are in charge of everything from the tripods to cranes and vehicle mounts.)
Everyone on my books was already employed on other productions. So I blew the cobwebs off my work boots and turned up to help them out myself.
The two days were a blast. I didn’t learn much about the film, except that it involved a Tongan marching band and a few hundred extras, all cheering and chee-hooing their hearts out in the windswept stadium. The call sheet told me that the project was called Red, White and Brass.
This week, on another typically balmy Wellington evening, I got to see the film.
Whānau, it’s an absolute blast. And since I was barely involved and my name doesn’t appear in the credits, I’m going to take this chance to tell you about it. Red, White and Brass is based on a true story.
During the 2011 Rugby World
Cup, the mighty Tongan rugby team were due to play France, in Wellington, on the first of October. Tickets for the match cost a fortune. So an enterprising group of young people decided to apply to be part of the pre-match entertainment. Match tickets would be included. They started a brass band, rehearsed like mad for a month and made it to the game.
On screen, Red, White and Brass is pretty much the definition of a feel-good film. The story is a movie classic and director Damon Fepulea’i (Dawn Raids) barely puts a foot wrong in telling it.
Any film about a disparate group who come together to put on a show can only end one way. But Fepulea’i and his team have a lot of fun getting us there. John-Paul Foliaki, Mikey Falesiu (Toke), Dimitrius SchusterKoloamatangi (The Panthers), Ilaisaane Green (Brutal Lives) and the rest of the young cast form a core with enough recognisable tension and shared humour between them to believably power through any of the film’s occasional shortcuts and contrivances.
Around them, a really wellchosen selection of supporting characters, true-to-life locations and a killer soundtrack – from Three Houses Down – give this film a likeability, a levity and an authenticity that makes it jump off the screen.
This is not a worthy-but-dull New Zealand drama. Red, White and
Brass is a celebration of music, community, and storytelling.
Halaifonua (Nua) Finau, who wrote the original script and inspired a lead character, says that everything about the plan seemed almost impossible. But hard work, great humour, family and belief in God got the band on to the field.
What happened next is still pretty legendary in rugby – and in the Tongan and Pasifika communities.
At the premiere last week, we heard the word māfana a lot. Like so many of the best words, it doesn’t translate perfectly into English. But, warmth, oneness, togetherness and being overcome with emotion at the rightness of a performance, are some of what māfana embraces.
All I know is, there was plenty of māfana at the Embassy Theatre. And, like the film says, ‘‘straight up, this actually happened’’.
Red, White and Brass is probably the most tears-on-your-cheeks, feelgood film you are going to see this year. Just go.
❚ Red, White and Brass is now screening nationwide