Interview: Toa Fraser Talks Walking The Dead Lands
Gareth Jones
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Today, May 29, director Toa Fraser’s unique and brutal journey into the world of warring Māori tribes, The Dead Lands, makes its way to UK cinemas with a DVD release to follow on June 1. We took the opportunity to sit down with Fraser and chat about the film, the decision to shoot it entirely in the Māori language, balancing the fantastical with the historic, and more.
So pack your bags, patus and taiahas… ’cause we’re off to The Dead Lands…
Dread Central: Was it a difficult ‘sell’ to get The Dead Lands funded and off the ground initially, given its uniqueness and the intention to have it completely in the Māori language?
Toa Fraser: Matthew Metcalfe, my producer, offered the script to me and it was written in English, but Glenn Standring, who wrote it, always intended for it to be spoken in Māori. We had quite a short conversation about whether we should go ahead with doing it in Māori – obviously, the idea of doing it in English was a real option, but we both agreed that it was a much more exciting idea to do it in Māori, and it turned out that the people we asked to come on board to make the movie agreed with us. I’m grateful to them because it really imbues the whole movie… the whole ethos and production process with a really unique responsibility and sensibility and a cool vibe.
DC: The Māori language itself is obviously still alive and well, but did the main cast already speak it fluently or did they have to be trained?
TF: Lawrence Makoare, who plays the warrior with no name, and James Rolleston, who plays Hongi, the boy… neither [of them] are fluent speakers. The only real fluent speakers in the main cast were Te Kohe Tuhaka, who plays Wirepa, the main baddie, and Raukura Turei, who plays a warrior woman that the heroes come across during the story.
So it was a learning process for a lot of the cast, and indeed a learning process for me because I don’t speak Māori [either]. So we were all coming at it with different levels of expertise, and the cast led a lot of the sharing of knowledge and expertise. It was really a great ethos that we worked with, and [everyone] supported each other.
DC: So you weren’t put entirely in the hands of language consultants…
TF: We worked with Tainui Stephens, who was our co-producer, and Scotty Morrison, who translated the script. Tainui was on set every day and a very close part of the performance team. We did work with language consultants, too, but there was much expertise within the cast as well. Another thing to say is that generation of [the cast’s] characters – the skills that they had to take on – wasn’t just to do with language; it was also to do with the physicality and the weaponry. And so there was a whole sort of holistic learning curve that everybody worked together on.
DC: Has the language itself actually remained the same in its modern version as it was at the time which The Dead Lands represents?
TF: Actually, that’s a great question. Scotty Morrison, who translated the English, is one of only twelve [people who can speak the older forms]. He’s a very esteemed speaker of the language; [yet, he’s a] young dude. He kind of went back to a more formal and classical way of speaking that surprised even a lot of the native speakers in the cast. For instance, Wairangi Koopu, who’s a former rugby league player and plays one of the baddies, he’s a very fluent speaker himself… but I remember him coming in to his audition and going “Whoa, I knew Scotty translated this ’cause it’s very hard!” (laughs)
So I suppose the equivalent would be Elizabethan English? And that kind of fits with the high-falutin’ Shakespearian performance, especially for [the character of] Wirepa… they’re all sort of ‘lord’ this and ‘betrothed’ that, and that kind of stuff.
DC: Going back to what you said about the actors taking on the elements of physicality required for the film – was it a big change for you as a director to shoot so many action sequences? Did that pose much of a challenge to you?
TF: Well, I grew up watching action movies, so I don’t know why I started my career working in theatre and drama stuff. I always wanted to make James Bond and Indiana Jones movies. We didn’t know how good we had it in the ’80s and ’90s with movies like ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’… all of those great, bloodthirsty, awesome John McTiernan type movies… but obviously at the start of my career I kind of paid my dues and did some more drama and comedy, dialogue-driven things.
I really wanted to change direction after doing ‘My Talks with Dean Spanley’… partly because we shot a small part of the story in New Zealand in the summer time – in fact, Xavier Horan, who plays Rangi in the film, Wirepa’s right-hand man, he played a small cameo as Peter O’Toole’s son in ‘Dean Spanley’ – and it was really at that moment, when we were shooting that, that I thought, “Man, I really would like to make an action movie with somebody like Xavier.”
Out in the sunshine… in the grit and the grubby, grimy, sandy, dusty, salty… out in the elements. Something lean and mean and muscular. It took a long time to figure out what that would be, but Matthew Metcalfe, my producer, and I worked together on a ballet film, ‘Giselle’, immediately before ‘The Dead Lands’. It was based on the Royal New Zealand production of that show, starring Gillian Murphy, who’s one of the world’s best dancers. I learned a lot about shooting choreography through that process, so [it felt like a] natural progression [to go] from ballet to the kind of raw performances and choreography that we were striving to get for this.
DC: There’s a focus here also on the psychological side of warfare, which historically the Maori were exceptionally good at. How did you approach that? Was it all in the script, or did you allow the actors to mostly bring it themselves?
TF: Lots of it was in the script, but even though it was in the script, there was still a way to make this movie that was more a straight out Jean-Claude Van Damme type thing, that ignored that [psychological element]… but I loved it and have spent a lot of time thinking about stuff like that over the last few years.
Really, the moment it coalesced for me was when Lawrence Makoare came in for his audition. Liz Mullane, who was our casting director, suggested Lawrence very strongly – and I was quite reluctant because I’d only seen him in ‘Lord of the Rings’, buried beneath prosthetics, and the worst James Bond film ever… the one with Halle Berry that Lee Tamahori directed… he was a James Bond baddie/henchman called Mr. Kil, I think, [in that one].
So I was suspicious… well, not suspicious, but I didn’t quite recognise his potential. But he came in and he did a scene and it was really good and quite moving. I gave him a very small, very simple bit of direction and he did another performance of the same scene and it was amazing. I cried. Liz cried. He cried. Stephen Butterworth, our reader, cried… we all sat down in circle on the ground and didn’t say anything for fifteen minutes or so. That moment really showed me the kind of gravity that the characters could bring.
DC: There’s an intriguing level of magic and mysticism and supernatural elements such as speaking with the dead and visiting ancestors. The audience always has an outside view of that, so while it may appear real to the characters, there’s always room for a grounded explanation, for example hallucinogenic mushrooms or shamanistic herbs. Was the film ever more fantastical or overt in its approach to this in the early stages of the script?
TF: I would say “no”. The balance was about the same as it is now. But I was always excited about the mystical… the combination of a real kind of earthy, muscular world where people get cut up and wounded, and a more kind of mystical, immortal world. For me, the big change that I brought to the table in that regard was that it was really important for me that there were stakes involved. I didn’t want anybody in the film that is involved in fighting to be invincible, or to have an immortal type of [feel to them]. The conversation that the Warrior has about whether he’s a spirit or a real man is kind of key to me. It was one of the exciting parts of the process.
DC: While the action elements of the story were obviously a big draw for you in terms of The Dead Lands, given your previous body of work, do you think that you’re a filmmaker more interested in aspects of culture than anything else? In this film particularly, the action and violence feel organic within the culture… your previous films have dealt with family culture and tradition also. Is this something that you actively focus on?
TF: That question’s quite tricky to answer… I consider myself an actor’s director. So when I’m working with actors… we’re always looking for ways to find the humanity. Often that comes through specificity, relating to place and time and culture. One of the things that was really liberating to me working on ‘The Dead Lands’ was to work in a more mythical place, in a time not really defined.
DC: Yeah… something that feels “different”…
TF: Yeah. Interestingly, I felt that you can illuminate different parts of humanity in a more fantastical setting than you can in a more realistic setting. Even though, with my more sort of drama/dialogue films, I remember really holding the idea of… I can’t remember what the exact words were… but I had a key phrase of something about “transcending authenticity”. Authenticity and a strong relationship to place is very important, but at the same time I feel like movies should take reality to somewhere else – and they do anyway because as soon as you put a frame around something, you’re changing it.
Many thanks for Toa for taking the time out to speak with us. As mentioned, keep an eye out for The Dead Lands in select cinemas from May 29 and DVD from June 1 courtesy of Icon Film Distribution.
Synopsis:
Hongi (James Rolleston) – a Māori chieftain’s teenage son – must avenge his father’s murder in order to bring peace and honour to the souls of his loved ones after his tribe is slaughtered through an act of treachery. Vastly outnumbered by a band of villains, led by Wirepa (Te Kohe Tuhaka), Hongi’s only hope is to pass through the feared and forbidden Dead Lands and forge an uneasy alliance with the mysterious “Warrior” (Lawrence Makoare), a ruthless fighter who has ruled the area for years.
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