Waru | Little White Lies
4

Anticipation.

Sounds like the most formally interesting anthology film in ages.

3

Enjoyment.

Like all anthologies, some chapters are more effective in the moment than others.

4

In Retrospect.

The cumulative power of this splintered portrait of community trauma creeps up on you.

Eight Māori female direc­tors com­bine for this heart-rend­ing dra­ma cen­tred around a young boy’s funeral.

In Māori, waru’ means eight’, and appro­pri­ate­ly this anthol­o­gy fea­ture is direct­ed by eight dif­fer­ent Māori women. Com­prised of eight sin­gle-take sequences fol­low­ing dif­fer­ent Māori women on the morn­ing of a tan­gi (funer­al) for a young boy, also named Waru, every chap­ter starts with the time­stamp of 9:59am, imply­ing that each sequence is hap­pen­ing concurrently.

But this is not a case of fol­low­ing eight dif­fer­ent par­ties who all just hap­pen to be con­gre­gat­ing at the same ser­vice. While some seg­ments con­cern peo­ple on the ground at the tan­gi, includ­ing Waru’s two grand­moth­ers, oth­ers come nowhere near it.

We see his teacher strug­gle dur­ing a school day; a Māori news­cast­er tak­ing a stand on live TV, against the racist rhetoric of the net­work in dis­cussing Waru’s death and the Māori cul­ture; and, in the final chap­ter, two sis­ters seek­ing some kind of vengeance. Teased through­out most of these is the impli­ca­tion that Waru died through abu­sive cir­cum­stances, specif­i­cal­ly a patri­ar­chal source going by who the sis­ters tar­get and an out­burst by one young woman at the tangi.

The anthol­o­gy for­mat is used to tell a larg­er sto­ry of how the high mor­tal­i­ty rate of Māori chil­dren impacts their cul­ture, but also to spot­light that vio­lence and abuse of the vul­ner­a­ble are not actu­al­ly symp­to­matic of a spe­cif­ic peo­ple. A com­mu­ni­ty or cul­ture is not inher­ent­ly respon­si­ble for pre­dom­i­nant­ly male enti­tle­ment that exerts con­trol and cor­rupt­ing influ­ence, but account­abil­i­ty en masse is the only way that this tox­i­c­i­ty can be appro­pri­ate­ly chal­lenged. Silence only enables.

If the rel­e­vance of each vignette to the rest isn’t always imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent, they all at least con­cern some­one com­ing to terms with respon­si­bil­i­ty: what could they have done? What could they still do? And if any of this sounds wor­ry­ing­ly like a poten­tial­ly stiff dia­tribe, it is any­thing but thanks to nar­ra­tive ambi­gu­i­ty, pal­pa­ble empa­thy and for­mal ingenuity.

Aside from a sor­row-height­en­ing anaemic colour palette uni­fy­ing them, each chap­ter, a cou­ple incor­po­rat­ing mag­i­cal real­ism, stands out thanks to the details unique to each. Grief comes in all forms, and none of the eight flu­id takes of Waru is quite like the other.

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