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Salient. Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 42 No. 19. August 6 1979

Te of Siege

[unclear: Te] of Siege

[unclear: n]State of Siegewas released last [unclear: was] immediately acclaimed right [unclear: he] country. "A work of genius, " [unclear: a] critic. "The most sensitive and [unclear: t] film that has ever been made [unclear: New] Zealand." said another,

[unclear: eas], the praise continued to pour in. [unclear: f]won the Golden Hugo at the [unclear: Chi-m] Festival and the Gold Medal ([unclear: Spe-la] Award) at the Miami Film Festival[unclear: don] Film Festival chose it as an [unclear: out-] movie, it was acclaimed at the [unclear: Mel-r] Film Festival, It has been sold to [unclear: te-] in Denmark, Belgium, Switzerland [unclear: f] and. Sales to the BBC, PBS TV [unclear: E/13], TV1, the National Film [unclear: Li-d] television in Sweden and [unclear: Aucklandare] undo negotiation.

[unclear: te]of Siegeis returning to [unclear: Welling-] short season at the Paramount, [unclear: r] August 10. It has already had [unclear: sea-] Auckland, Christchurch and [unclear: Dune-ow] we reprint our review of last [unclear: en] the Film premiered at the [unclear: We-] Film Festival.

[unclear: f] fifteen on the last day of the [unclear: Fest-] an all New Zealand session, and [unclear: noney] it took the cake. Vincent [unclear: irst] major film A State of Siege [unclear: bid] as the feature (although only [unclear: nutes] longer than Richard [unclear: Tur-][unclear: o] River's Meet which preceded it) [unclear: any] ways it turned out to be the [unclear: st] ece of New Zealand film making [unclear: er] seen. What made it so [unclear: succes-]

[unclear: Th] answer is quite simple: Ward and [unclear: er] knew how to use the medium of [unclear: ley] managed to translate Janet [unclear: e] story, which is securely grounded the[unclear: edium] of literature (words) into [unclear: em n] story, created out of light and [unclear: de] movement and stillness, express [unclear: ar] depiction.

[unclear: e's] novel concerns Malfred Signal. [unclear: new] retired Art teacher who has spent [unclear: lif] in a closed South Island township, [unclear: h] (or rather, telling) girls to paint [unclear: d] shadow, painting landscape [unclear: lours] Without any people in them, [unclear: erly], nursing her dying mother. [unclear: is] spinster, alone, living on quietly [unclear: d], unexciting dreams, and now at [unclear: r] than everyone else, wanting to [unclear: free]

[unclear: Sone] sells the family house and buys [unclear: e] on Karemoana Island, "up North" [unclear: ys] after she arrives a storm blows [unclear: ght], and someone comes knocking [unclear: oor]. The knocking, the storm, and [unclear: nd] of the prowler swishing through [unclear: leg grass], continue all night.

[unclear: He] power is cut off at the outside main, [unclear: a he] night develops Malfred's fear, and the methods she uses to control it, drive her deeper and deeper into her hidden memories. Morning comes, a stone is thrown through the window Wrapped in newspaper on which Malfred sees an unintelligible poem and the crayoned words "Help, Help". Three days later they find her, cold hand clutching the cold stone, dead.

Photo from the film 'A State of Siege'

The strength of the novel is in the way Frame develops each memory, moving surely but unobtrusively from the public to the private, allowing us to understand Malfred's hopes and fears, not through the terror of the night so much as in the way Malfred explains things, rationalises them and has come to live with them. Thus the presence of Wilfred, the one person with whom she has ever shared "a darker undercurrent" in a friendship, is scarcely mentioned in the first half of the book. Yet by the end this man, who has justified her being able to say "I have known love", with whom she went walking, riding and who kissed her once in the fernhouse before leaving for the war and not returning, has come right to the forefront of her imagination. It could even be him outside; rather, if it were him outside returned from the dead, she wouldn't let him in.

Malfred's thought processes correspond, on a slower time scale, with the popular idea of what happens when one dies and the seige she experiences that night in the cottage reflects the beseiging of her life by the outside world.

The film does not go into this in any great detail. Much of the simplification is circumstantial: we see little of Malfred's encounters with other people on Karemoana or her memories of events down South. This simplification is made inevitable by the low budget, but the remarkable thing is that instead of taking shortcuts the film makers have altered the nature of the story to render the extra details unnecessary.

Running at only 54 minutes A State of Siege is of short story length and works splendidly as such. The film opens with an extended sequence of an old and battered bus doing the afternoon school run along the Wairarapa coast. Gone are all the conversations and experiences of the book's journey to Karemoana. In their place we see a middle aged woman dislocated from her environment, coping as only a person who has always known this dislocation can do.

This sets the method by which the film as a story develops. The particularities which make the story are reduced to generalities, but they are not stereotyped. Many things ensure this. Firstly, Malfred's possessions, (her photographs, teapot and cup, clothes, books) are very carefully and exquisitely established in our minds. This is done by a generally close, moving camera, which pans continuosly from Malfred to mantle piece, lampshade to Malfred. . . thus although we only learn of her experiences in a generalised way (with one or two exceptions) the detail of her present existence is more than enough to establish her reality.

The second insurance against stereotyping is the acting. Anne Flannery as Malfred has an extremely difficult job, creating a character with very little resort to words, who is literally scared to death, yet who all the while maintains a mental rationalisation and "mature" exterior as a defense. In a sense Malfred's mind unravels but it doesn't become untidy. Flannery captures this brilliantly, her expression, timing and depth of feeling playing a central role in the film's success.

While there is little dialogue, sound does have a vital role. All the natural sounds are acutely heard, and together with John Cousin's music are to the fore in establishing the tension and mood. These sounds also contribute greatly to the particularisation of the events.

There is one other aspect to the film which overrides everything else: the tone. In the opening sequence, the bus does not merely trundle along but appears in all its bloated dilapidation somewhat like a hippopotamus. In a word it is fascinating, and this fascination draws us into the film.

Much of the credit for this must go to photographer Alun Bollinger. Whether gliding round the rooms of the cottage, capturing in extraordinary close-ups Malfred's eye or hand, or challenging the brutal pounding sea, Bollinger's camerawork is a powerful evocation of light, colour and shape, and most of all shadow. It represents in fact, all the years Malfred has spent in teaching girls to paint and never succeeding: it is her sustaining belief, her world.

Right near the end of the film, Malfred picks up the stone thrown through the window. Where once she told girls to see the stone, see its shadow she now touches it, holds it. The film captures this moment superbly, and if the end follows suddenly after, on reflection, there really seems no way it could have gone on. To return to the short story analogy, such an ending often achieved by a sudden revelation or twist in meaning. Here, the revelation exists, but it follows naturally from the film and is in the fullest sense a proper conclusion.

A State of Seige is a remarkable achievement, by all who created its parts and by Vincent Ward and producer Timothy White (the joint screenwriters) who put it all together. If it is shown again, see it.

Simon Wilson