Early in Uproar there’s a scene in which a small number of marchers are — in a quiet South Dunedin street — peacefully protesting the visit of South Africa’s apartheid emissaries.
Slung between two of them is a banner that reads "Justice for Black South Africa, Justice for Brown New Zealand would be nice too!".
If audiences haven’t already worked it out, the banner is an unequivocal declaration the film is not going to limit itself to the time or events of the ill-advised 1981 rugby tour. Indeed, the politics Uproar traverses brings us right up to date with the calculated race-baiting and cynical othering of several contenders in this year’s general election. Critical race theory? Decolonisation? Yep, Uproar probably is.
However, much is left for filmgoers to register, or not, as they choose. It would be (just about) possible to have a laugh and a cry and eat your popcorn, and give no thought to why the film-makers chose to drop Dick Scott’s book Ask That Mountain into one of the library scenes — and still come away regarding the ticket price as money very well spent.
That’s because, firstly, this is clever movie-making, and secondly, high among the considerations for the film’s two directors, Paul Middleditch and Hamish Bennett, was that their kiriata should appropriately platform the sui generis that is Julian Dennison.
Uproar tells the story of Josh Waaka, played by Dennison, a dramatically inclined misfit in a rugby-obsessed high school who must get out from under the institution’s suffocating traditions, a task made more difficult by the heightened atmosphere of the tour.
"He is amazing," Bennett says of his star. "First and foremost he is just an amazing young man. He was 19 during filming, he just turned 20 right near the end of it.
"He is a beautiful young man."
The director pauses the effusions to note Dennison’s mum Mabelle Dennison also appears in the film, as the scene-stealing Nana Tui. Her character delivers one of the film’s more devastating commentaries on colonisation — helping carry that storyline with her son. You don’t have to look any further than whānau to know why the young actor is so exceptional, Bennett says.
Work on the film had been under way for several years by the time Bennett joined the crew, tasked with continuing work on the script.
"When I came to the story and was looking at the rewrite, it was a rare gift to know Julian was going to be in that role. It was a really lovely thing because I could take his character anywhere and know he would cope.
"We know his comedic gifts but he is an incredibly vulnerable actor and, dramatically, he went to places we hoped for — but he gave us everything and more."
That’s not to say he wasn’t challenged.
"We had a 26-day shoot and he was on set for 26 days, so he carried the entire weight of this film for us and that is a huge ask of a 19-year-old.
"He’s trying to tell a story for Māori, he is trying to tell a story for Kāi Tahu, he was very aware of all of those things.
For all that the action revolves around Dennison’s character, his work — including that note-perfect comic timing — is far from the film’s sole highlight. Among a long list is the rawness of James Rolleston’s performance.
Rolleston plays Dennison’s tuakana, a young man struggling to recover from a serious injury — a challenge Rolleston faced in his own life following a serious car crash in 2016.
"James brought so much of himself to that role, I only had James in mind when I was writing that role," Bennett says.
"We know what he has been through, and while I didn’t want to ever exploit that, I wanted to know how he felt about us tapping into that, what he’s been through himself. And he was really, really open to doing that. Because, obviously, if you can tap into real-life experience, it just enriches that character and he was able to do that — but so beautifully."
Having two of New Zealand’s highest-wattage acting talents together was remarkable, he says. One moment in particular has stayed with him.
"I remember sitting by the monitor, and it is only a tiny moment, it is a moment when James goes to Julian and they are just face to face," he says.
Rolleston’s character, Jamie Waaka, is coaching Josh Waaka’s rugby team and, in that moment, imparting some last-minute encouragement to his teina.
"And I was just getting really teary," Bennett says. "It is not for anything to do with the line or anything like that ... it is just to do with the fact that we have these two young men, who are so precious to New Zealand, face to face in a scene, it was just a bloody lovely thing, you know."
The Springbok tour provides a particular milieu for all this, and they certainly weren’t going to shy away from the complexities of the time, Bennett says, but it was always their intention for the turmoil to be the catalyst for the story as opposed to the point.
At its heart, this is about a young man finding his voice and his tūrangawaewae — his identity, his place.
"It is always about the character first and foremost.
"I guess the last thing you would want to do with a film like this is overburden it or weigh it down too much with the political stuff, or the societal stuff. It is there but we don’t want it to be so heavy that it drags it down."
However, because Dennison (Ngāti Hauā) was involved and because the film was set in Dunedin it was important to ensure the narrative accurately represented the issues for tāngata whenua and mana whenua that necessarily arose in a story that addressed racism, he says.
It had to both honour the Kāi Tahu experience and recall the impacts of colonisation on Māori across the motu.
"I whakapapa to Kāi Tahu and it was very important to me to try to tell that story honestly and truthfully," Bennett says.
That kaupapa is nowhere more articulate than in the haka Ko Kāi Tahu E Haruru Nei, composed for the film by Ōtepoti father and son team Komene and Kiringāna Cassidy, which provides Uproar’s two most viscerally climactic moments.
The haka, in very simple terms, speaks of the founding ancestors of Kāi Tahu, Bennett says.
"It is a proclamation of the pride we have in our iwi. It speaks of our founding groups, founding ancestors, and says ‘this is us, here we are standing strong’."
It means Uproar does some work the anti-apartheid movement, for the most part, didn’t quite get around to.
"The complexity of that time, as a nation, for New Zealand — there were clearly a lot of different things going on for New Zealand. But it was probably even more so for Māori," Bennett says.
"There were many people who were protesting what was going on with indigenous South Africans but possibly weren’t as aware of the situation with the injustice that had been faced by Māori in our own country."
Interestingly, the big-picture analogies and connecting realities in the film have already resonated with offshore audiences.
"We just finished our world premiere in Toronto last week and a lot of the parallels were being drawn between the Black Lives Matter movement and the situation for indigenous people in Canada — there are huge parallels that remain," Bennett says. "As much as it was a very specific time in New Zealand’s history, I am a big believer in that idea of the more specific you make something the more universal it becomes. That was certainly the case with this."
Dunedin’s brooding mise en scene is among the film’s other stars, it’s low weather, dramatic geography of hill, harbour and coastline, and it’s stubborn built heritage.
Middleditch says he wanted to set the film in Dunedin from the start, as his family has connections to Port Chalmers dating back to 1940.
"I’ve always been fascinated with the city and the landscape," he says. "It’s also a very ‘colonial’ city with strong visual references of Scotland and in 1981 was a predominantly Pākehā community — making Josh’s feeling of being an outsider, stronger. It also was able to pass for 1981 due to the preservation of buildings and landscape."
Among the references that international audiences may not pick up on, and further tie the film’s narrative to Dunedin in particular, is one that occurs in another of the film’s protest scenes.
Erana James, playing the Black Panther Party-styled character Samantha (yes, conceivable, Dunedin had it’s own branch back in the day), parades solo in front of a baying sports field stand with a sign recalling the famous Land Wars declaration of defiance, "Ka whawhai tonu mātou ... āke āke āke", while explaining to the blinkered football crowd that the neighbouring street was built by prisoners from Taranaki — a clear reference to Dunedin’s 19th century history. It’s another moment that collapses time, drawing a parallel between the civil disobedience of the anti-tour protesters and the peaceful resistance at Parihaka — and makes sense of Ask That Mountain’s cameo.
"Touching in on those historical elements, the Taranaki prisoners, I wanted to weave that into the story," Bennett says. "It is an unfortunate but a very important part of our history."
Uproar gets its own John Bryce too, the menacing patriarch of Josh’s school, St Gilbert’s, Principal Slane, is the very personification of monocultural New Zealand — lining up, metaphorically, with Ces Blazey and the notorious Red Squad against any expressions of resistance or rangatiratanga.
He weaponises the whakatauakī "He iwi tahi tātou" like a card-carrying member of Hobson’s Pledge — or race-baiting politician — to enforce compliance and shut down debate. It was again, Bennett says, an opportunity to interrogate how far we’ve come as a nation since ‘81.
While the goodies and baddies are easy to spot in Uproar, Bennett’s quick to point out that life’s a bit more complex.
Growing up in Northland, his family were part of a farming community where most people were about the sport back in ’81.
His parents were against the tour, but managed to preserve their close connections to the community — while at the same time he had uncles at the rugby games.
"For lack of a better phrase, it is not a black and white situation," he says.
"I understand it is not about necessarily saying that anyone is evil and anyone is great. It is not about that. It is just trying to show that entirety of what made that period of time such a volatile and complex time."
Among the other threads Middleditch and Bennett pull to draw that out, is Greg McGee’s celebrated play, Foreskin’s Lament, which was written just before the tour. McGee was both an All Black triallist and actively anti-tour.
Darby’s character, English teacher Brother Madigan, lobs the script like a lifeline to Josh — perhaps taking a leaf out of Bennett’s day-job experiences.
"I have been a school teacher most of my life," he says. "That idea of having empathy for the outsider is something that is very close to me."
Foreksin’s Lament challenged prevailing notions of masculinity in the early ’80s, but can be read as no less relevant to today’s culture wars. The play’s central character butts up against his rugby club’s vigorously policed cultural boundaries — the misfit revealing the harm of it.
Uproar uses the play’s defining question, "Whaddarya?" to do similar work.
In the context of the film, it is a question Dennison’s character Josh is asking of himself, Bennett says.
"Whaddarya? Who am I? It’s the question he’s been wanting to answer throughout most of the film, and he ultimately does that with the haka, which takes his desire to perform and combines it with an affirmation of the pride and strength he finds in his Māori heritage. What are you? I’m this."
In our time, that question "whaddarya" has been turned around, Bennett says.
"Whereas back then it was a way to keep people in line and conforming, now it’s a genuine question. Finding who you are, raising your voice and expressing yourself takes courage, particularly if your voice differs from what’s considered the norm ... but it’s absolutely a question worth trying to find the answer to."
The movie
- After a premiere screening at the Regent tomorrow, Uproar opens at Rialto from Thursday.
