Star spans emotions in ‘disturbing’ film
‘‘I felt the themes of each scene in some form or another . . . I have lived it, heard of it or come across it.’’
Actor Matthias Luafutu
Matthias Luafutu saw the first sunset of his life on the set of Coming Home in the Dark, the ‘‘authentic tear’’ in his eye changing the film.
The Christchurch actor is a man of few words in the thriller directed by his friend and former acting classmate, James Ashcroft, but maintains a malevolent presence in the starring role of Tubs. ‘‘Eyebrow acting we used to call it at Toi Whakaari,’’ said Luafutu who stars alongside Daniel Gillies, Erik Thomson and Miriama McDowell in the film, which opens in theatres this week.
‘‘I had no voice but I felt the themes of each scene in some form or another . . . I have lived it, heard of it or come across it.’’ Adapted from a short story by leading New Zealand writer Owen Marshall, Coming Home in the Dark featured at the Sundance Film Festival in February.
Luafutu said the brutal story, set in an isolated picturesque landscape, had ‘‘haunted’’ his emotions. A family encounter a pair of murderous sociopaths in a dark revenge plot where even the isolation and majestic rural scenery has a disturbing intensity. ‘‘Morally . . . it is a hard watch,’’ Luafutu said.
It also had themes of child abuse in state institutions, which was personally challenging. His father, Fa’amoana Luafutu, came to New Zealand from Samoa at the age of 8 in 1960 and experienced a ‘‘life of abuse in state care’’.
Last month, at the age of 69, he offered his witness testimony to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. ‘‘When I was younger, in my teens, I was incarcerated in correctional training up in Rangipo,’’ Matthias Luafutu said.
‘‘It is different to what my father went through but that, and being in Cholmondeley [Children’s Centre] when I was 9 years old, reminded me of the loneliness and how scary places like that are. They were real prisons. The ones I experienced anyway.’’
He said he and brother, Malo, best known as award-winning rapper Scribe, had been ‘‘purging and healing’’ as a family and were ‘‘now in a good place’’.
Luafutu also stars alongside his son and father in an upcoming TV series about the dawn raids and activists the Polynesian Panthers.
At his lowest point, while incarcerated at the age of 19 – ‘‘ruining a promising rugby career’’ – his dream of becoming an actor seemed ‘‘as likely as my brother becoming New Zealand’s best rapper’’.
Now Hollywood is headhunting Ashcroft and some insiders hint Luafutu is also poised for stardom. ‘‘I trust James, he is meticulous as a director. It is good having that trust and a friend like that,’’ Luafutu said. ‘‘I joked to him that I’ll be the Samuel L Jackson to his Tarantino and he can put me in all his films but he just cocked an eyebrow the way he does.’’
Luafutu first fell in love with theatre at primary school in Christchurch when an inspirational teacher made him the lead actor in a film competition at Wainoni Primary. ‘‘Mr Whitley – he was great . . . he knew things were not the best at home obviously but did that instead of giving me the strap like other teachers.’’
Luafutu said he often ‘‘pinched himself’’ in disbelief at where he was now.
‘‘I always question myself – am I good enough to be with this actor? I am always wowed by them. It never gets old for me that feeling.’’
The film’s final scenes became ‘‘really personal’’. ‘‘I had never seen a sunset in my whole 45 years alive. Spoiler – that was my last scene of the film, me crying at the sunset, and it was a wrap after that,’’ he said. ‘‘It was not supposed to be that way, me crying at the end, I remember Mike the producer coming over to me and saying ‘you egg you’ve changed the film’.
‘‘I didn’t know I had done that, I just couldn’t help but feel truthful to what I was feeling.’’