TINGE OF TE RAUPARAHA
IF PEARCE FOUND THE CONVERT A chance to embrace his Kiwi ancestry, the film certainly suggests a full-immersion Aotearoa experience.
The Lee Tamahori movie that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last year is only the third local feature he’s directed, after Once Were Warriors in 1994 and 2016’s Mahana, a family melodrama based on Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies by Witi Ihimaera.
There are literary connections to
The Convert. The movie began with producer Robin Scholes buying the rights to Wulf, Hamish Clayton’s 2011 novel about an English trader encountering Te Rauparaha. Brad Haami, a cultural adviser and an associate producer on the production, suggested a fictional setting and characters would be better than something specific to the Ngāti Toa warlord. From there, the script evolved with a story by Michael Bennett, and additional writing by Greg McGee.
When Scholes sent him the workin-progress, Tamahori didn’t warm to it. “Originally, Munro, who’s our lead character, was really a religious zealot, which was not an attractive proposition for me, and I didn’t like him as a character,” he says in the film’s production notes. “I wouldn’t go and see a film about a guy like that.”
Instead, the director delved into the histories of prominent missionaries such as Henry Williams and Samuel Marsden. Williams had served time in the Royal
Iwi at war: Antonio te Maioha as Maianui, whose daughter is saved by Munro.
Navy during the Napoleonic Wars before becoming a man of the cloth. That idea of a priest with a military past he’s possibly trying to escape informed Pearce’s character.
Meanwhile, Haami was working on the creation of a fictional whakapapa for each of the Māori characters. “I’ve always felt that you couldn’t have authentic Māori storytelling without creating the backstory. And a lot of films don’t like backstory but as Māori, we are a backstory people. So, it’s important because the whakapapa, the histories of these people, build the motives for the people in the film to act in certain ways.”
One of the film’s warring rangatira, the ruthless Akatarewa, played by Lawrence Makoare, has echoes of Te Rauparaha, as well as Ngāpuhi chiefs of the Musket Wars period such as Hongi Hika and Pomare.
Tamahori and Australian screenwriter Shane Danielsen, who was brought in by the film’s Australian co-producers, share the final screenplay credit. As well as Pearce, the film’s other lead Pākehā role is played by Australian Jacqueline McKenzie.
It’s not Tamahori’s first film about the period. Early in his career, he was an assistant director on Geoff Murphy’s Utu. In that film, the Pākehā vicar had an even rougher time with the locals than Pearce’s lay preacher. ▮