(1983)2Nathan SouthernNew Zealander Geoff Burton's 1983 colonial revenge drama Utu displays virtuoso filmmaking skill and instinct, yet becomes morally and politically repugnant. On a moviemaking level, the picture feels ingeniously shot and edited. The gut-wrenching sequence in which farmer Williamson (Bruno Lawrence) and his wife, Emily (Ilona Rodgers), cower in the kitchen, bedroom, and shed while vengeful Te Wheke and his maniacal, Manson family-like band of Maoris prowl around the property, shattering windows and shrieking at the top of their lungs, guns blazing -- ever slowly caging in their captors (the film's highlight) -- emerges as a prime example. These events inevitably recall Straw Dogs -- not only because of that picture's identical sequence, but because, like Sam Peckinpah, Burton ratchets the suspense quotient up with lightning-flash editing and hair-raising bursts of violence until the onscreen atmosphere nearly explodes with tension. And equally riveting is Burton's subsequent decision to fracture the narrative, cross-cutting fluidly between the stories of those victimized (or nearly victimized) by Te Wheke for the rest of the picture. But therein also lies the film's central, crippling flaw.
Burton spends around 40 seconds on Utu's prologue -- with the obliteration of Te Wheke's family -- minimizing, in the audience's mind, the crushing weight of Wheke's inner devastation. And because Burton sides, dramatically, with the colonial settlers for the remainder of the picture, he never takes the time and care to understand Te Wheke. Never once do we, as an audience, gain essential insight into the customs and rituals of Wheke or the Maori culture (which would be fascinating cinematic territory), and grasp, on a socio-political level, the tragedy that belies the extinction of Wheke's brood. Instead, as portrayed by Anzac Wallace, Wheke (with his decapitation of a Christian preacher and his bug-eyed, slathering tongue-wagging over his cowering victims) comes across as nothing more than a blood-hungry psychopath. We not only fear for the settlers, but feel truly sorry for them. Burton is approaching the conflict on about the same level as John Carpenter's Halloween or Sean Cunningham's Friday the 13th (and with no more political insight than those films). Burton may have a number of cultural details right, but only in the textbook sense, sans the sociopolitical meaning that would give those details weight and depth. Take the tongue-wagging, for instance: because Burton never gives it a context, it feels drenched in medieval Catholic imagery. From a WASPish viewer's perspective, Te Wheke resembles the slobbering, fire-breathing demons and gargoyles of Christian teaching, which brings Utu dangerously close to an oversimplified, white-bread evangelical allegory and contributes to Burton's justification of the Brit colonialism and exploitation. The picture's colonial subject and raw dramatic material invite comparison to the far-superior work of Gillo Pontecorvo. But Pontecorvo is a humanist -- whereas Burton evinces sadism and bigotry in front of his camera and throughout his screenplay. At heart, Utu is a reactionary, cynical, nativistic, and unforgivably racist film; how it earned decent reviews from liberal American critics is baffling.
Utu is the Maori word for "Retribution," which sums up the chief motivating factor of this New Zealand-produced drama. Set in the 1870s, the film details the exigencies of British Colonial rule. A Maori scout, Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace), stumbles across a native village that has been destroyed in a British raid. Since it is the scout's own village, he deserts the British army, the better to seek "utu." Leading a vigilante force consisting of his fellow Maoris, Te Wheke kills as many British settlers as he can get his hands on. The feverish conviction of his crusade is in stark contrast to the attitudes of the British, who seem more concerned with material possessions than with human beings. Popular down under star Bruno Lawrence is cast as a vengeance-driven settler who makes it his personal mission in life to end Te Wheke's reign of terror. The most expensive New Zealand-filmed project to date, Utu was an enormous success upon its first domestic release; the American version runs some 15 minutes shorter than the original.
