The Case for Sainthood

It seems to be a very good year for New Zealand cinema, with lots of locally made films hitting the screens.  Not always the biggest of screens, and not always with a huge amount of promotion, but still, out there.

One of the lower flying entries is The Last Saint, a film set in Auckland and mainly about poverty and drugs.  The cast is mainly Polynesian, with the Saint himself, Minka, a young man of mixed Samoan and Maori heritage.  

Minka leads a hard life in inner city Auckland.  His mother has recently turned away from drugs and appears a manic depressive even without medication.  The father he barely knows comes back to help him with a job, which it turns out revolves around the world of providing muscle to strip clubs, local crime bosses, with the occasional free lancing and pursuit (and beating to a pulp) if his own interests as well.  On top of that, Minka is attracted to one of his neighbours, Zoe, who works at the local Countdown supermarket, but she comes with issues of her own.

The film starts off feeling very raw, both in the sense that it is punctuated by violence and poverty, but also in the sense that the production and direction feels a little uncertain.  Beulah Koale, who plays Minka, seems a little unpolished as he portrays a young man trying to do good in the hard, bad world he lives in.  He seems much more confident with the more angry scenes with the quieter ones, which is perhaps not just due to himself as the film itself pulls off the loud, angry, drug fuelled and pumped up scenes much more convincingly than some of the quieter, story setting elements. 

As Minka’s mother and father, Joy Vaele and Calvin Tuteao are both sympathetic and terrifying, though their relationship seems to channel a bit too much Beth and Jake Heke to really feel like stand alone characters.  The supporting characters tend to vary from quietly realistic to outrageous caricatures.  For example, Zoe is played tough but vulnerable and comes across as (not necessarily likeable but) believable, whereas Jared Turner’s loud generic money grabbing bad guy seems to come from a much shoutier American film.  They aren’t all at those extremes though: heavies Xavier Horan and a jacked Joseph Naufahu have very different styles that still seem like they could be realistic, one quiet but deadly, the other a lot of bluster and seeming to rely more on intimidation and roid-fuelled rage than actual skill. 

Minka experiences different aspects of the inner city drug scene, from the brothels to the island-based tribal torture cells, from the fairly straightforward to the crazy people high on P and armed to the teeth.  It’s a disturbing world to be taken through for someone as relatively ignorant as myself, and I am hoping the experiences are more concocted than ripped from the headlines or the writers own personal lives.

The initial nauseating shaky cam becomes a bit more tolerable as the film progresses, and I can kind of forgive some of the more incredible coincidences that propel the plot, but the biggest issue for me was the film’s soundtrack.  There is a lot of music in the film, some oomsk oomsk dance music (in one scene the dialogue was completely drowned out in the sound and I had no idea what was being said, nor did anyone around me), but most is taken directly from Kiwi FM, and not all of it really goes with the characters involved.  I can understand a lot of Herbs and Ardijah for fairly straight forward reasons; I find it much harder to reconcile Minka’s Dad and his goon driving around listening to Split Enz (the song kind of fit the scene, but not the people involved!) and while Shihad is pretty awesome, again, and this might be stereotyping here, I doubt that would be what these men would listen to.  I suppose its also a way to set the scene in NZ, give some money to some local artists, and save money on international music licensing, but it really distracts from the gritty quasi realism of the film by anchoring the characters to music they may listen to only occasionally and even the possibly only in the privacy of their own homes.

The ending did not feel like it came organically from the rest of the film.  Certain events occurred that didn’t really seem to have points or stank of lazy coincidence, and relationships were formed that seemed to come out of nowhere.  That’s not to say it wasn’t affecting or gripping, far from it, but it did pose a lot of questions rather than tie everything neatly together. 

It is great to see a Polynesian-based film set in modern Auckland, showing the darker side of life to contrast with the church and festival-based events that tend to be shown on television.  As I said, I can’t vouch for its realism, and there were a lot of unpolished elements that lessened the impact of the storytelling (including some of the story itself), but I enjoyed the film quite a lot.  Its not for everyone, but it is interesting.

Verdict: The Last Saint is a good effort in a year of New Zealand films that I have quite enjoyed.  Some great acting talent is mixed in with some less seasoned performers, but they all come together to paint a world that is sad, dark and not really brimming with any hope whatsoever.  Which is a bit depressing, now I write it, but makes for a gripping story.  7 pinballs out of 10.