For the 40th anniversary of Vigil, Film Talks is showing the film at the Embassy at 6:15 pm on Tuesday, November 19th. Full members of the Wellington Film Society are eligible for $12 concession tickets to this screening, which also features a Q&A with Vincent Ward and lead actress Fiona Kay. Tickets are available from Humanitix at this link. As a taster, Russ Kale reflects on the film’s striking engagement with Aotearoa’s primal emotions.
His debut feature, Vincent Ward’s Vigil (1984) is something out of New Zealand’s unconscious: . an isolated farm; a dead father; a mysterious figure emerging from the bush in an oilskin; the sounds of endless rain and wind. Often in contemporary cinema, Aotearoa’s untamed spaces still have a habit of looking lush and friendly (even in Roger Donaldson’s Sleeping Dogs, the dangerous mountain ranges are still sun-drenched and green). In Vigil, Ward and his cinematographer Alun Bollinger have something more primal in mind.
Without her father, 12-year-old Toss (Fiona Kay) is abruptly forced to try and comprehend what is going on around her. The farm takes on such a moody, symbolic quality that it feels like we are living inside Toss’s dreams. While we may see things that are actually happening, they are woven together into a patchwork where the proportions can’t be trusted. As adults, we would fill the gaps between events with our logic: Toss does too, but her logic comes from the credulous world of childhood. There is an inevitable violence, however, whenever the facts of the real world, and the intentions of the adults around her, come into contact with the imagined world she has constructed.
Vigil has some strong connections to several films in the Wellington Film Society’s programme for this year. Writing for NZ On Screen, Richard King observes that Ward has been heavily influenced by the films of Tarkovsky, and there are certainly some similarities between the images of the farm in Vigil and the house in Solaris (although the greens and greys in the landscape are almost identical to the forbidding world of Stalker, another Tarkovsky classic).
More prominent, though, are the connections to Christine Jeffs’ Rain, which the WFS screened in April. The narratives of both films revolve around young girls trying to navigate their way into the world of adulthood, and the mysterious men who the protagonists find both compelling and repulsive. Both films are also set in foundational places in pākehā New Zealand psyche – the bach and the farm – both places we commonly associate with happy childhood memories, but which have the capacity to easily turn sour. In both places, abandoning responsibility is a recipe for disaster. The weather may be different, but the tone is very much the same.
One thing that does add to Vigil’s sense of mystery is the fact that almost none of the cast are recognisable faces. Fiona Kay appears in almost every scene of the film, and her performance is nothing short of astonishing, but she only has a handful of later credits in the early 1990s (including an appearance in An Angel at My Table). The one name that fans of New Zealand media might instantly know is Frank Whitten, but he’s almost unrecognisable here as Ethan. Taciturn and rugged, he’s very different from his most famous role as Grandpa Ted in five seasons of Outrageous Fortune.
Vigil is a watershed in the history of New Zealand cinema, and a film that recognises who we are in an unflinching way. It’s truly exciting to have it on the big screen once more.
Keen to see this film at the Embassy? Purchase your concession tickets here!