Lee Tamahori’s stately period drama is based around a British settlement in New Zealand circa the 1830s, where Guy Pearce’s preacher protagonist attempts to keep the peace – or at least minimise hostilities – between white settlers and Māori tribes, and between the tribes themselves. Spreading the gospel alone would have been tough for his character, Thomas Munro, who is told upon arrival that “if you’ve come to win souls for Jesus, you’re going to be busy”. But reinforcing the sixth commandment in this neck of the woods, during this violent time, was surely doomed from the start, no matter how many finely worded monologues the silver-tongued sermoniser delivers.
This generally well made and intelligently staged film opens with images of lush wilderness and misty mountains, and a long shot following a bird that gets swooped and killed by a larger one – an unsubtle visual metaphor for one thing supplanting or destroying another. Through this image Tamahori suggests this process is natural and cyclical, equally applicable perhaps to individual creatures and to empires (a point powerfully made in 2006’s Apocalypto, which begins with Mayans capturing a tribe and ends with the arrival of Spanish ships, announcing a new era).
