The dead lands

Day
Dead
of the

With Toa Frasers latest film The Dead Lands opening in cinemas, audiences
will be treated to a long-overdue glimpse of pre-colonial Mori life, stellar
performances from some of our best actors and the martial artform known as
mau rkau. Mana sat down with the director in Toronto for the premiere of his
film, to talk about the challenges of making this action epic.
By Alexander Bisleyfilm stills by matt klitscher

46|mana magazine

www. mana.co. nz |47

The dead lands

n a sweltering Toronto
day, director Toa Fraser welcomes me outside at his favourite local caf on John St,
aptly named The Dark Horse.
We are meeting to krero
about The Dead Lands,his
bold new film, which will
have its world premiere at the
Toronto Film Festival later in
the evening. The Dark Horse is
an oasis among the glorious madness and
excess of the worlds biggest and blingiest
film festival. By contrast, Fraser is calm
and collected.
Dazzling, The Hollywood Reporter will
rave the next day about the striking images
unfurling on Scotiabank Theatres screen.
Media and audience alike will be impressed
by the soulful performance of young actor
James Rolleston, the ptiki seventh-former
who gained nationwide adoration forBoy.
Wonder boy, TV3 will say.
Dressed in his films palette of red and
blue, the director is characteristically affable,
as he has been in interviews since his play
No. 2 was all the rage from Sweden to the
Edinburgh Festival a decade and a half ago.
48|mana magazine

Denzel, watch out, James Rollestons

coming to town, Fraser tweeted recently.
Hes excited about Rollestons great potential. Hes got it all to play for.
The actor plays a young warrior avenging
the death of his father. In the great tradition of baddies coming to peoples villages
and slaughtering just about everybody, he
decides to go on a revenge mission, says
Fraser. Become a grown man and a warrior:

Lawrence Makoare
as The Warriora
mysterious figure
that haunts the Dead
Lands, killing anybody
who ventures there.

he feels this is the only right thing to do. He

sets off in pursuit across these Dead Lands
where this legendary mysterious Warrior
[Lawrence Makoare] resides and haunts the
lands, killing anybody who ventures in there.
Co-star Xavier Horan, who plays second
lieutenant to the films main villain Wirepa
(played by TK Tuhaka), also enthuses about
Rolleston: Hes young, hes full of energy.
Hes quite competitive for a young buck. He

was never gonna pike out of any challenges,

he thrived on them.
For his part, Rolleston tells me he was
really impressed with the kaupapa of brotherhood and support Fraser led on set. It
was mean, bro. One of the best shoots Ive
been on, maybe the best. Im really excited
to work with him again.
As well as a strict training regime, the
cast and their director followed a regimented

dietary routine. It was awesome to be involved with a group of guys that I identified
really strongly with who were all looking after
each other, echoes Fraser. TK [Tuhaka]
is the best example of that in my mind. He
and I had good conversations about the
chilly bag that he carries everywhere. Full
of peanut butter and protein shakes and that
kind of thing.
At the same time, I was drinking about
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The dead lands

The Weapons of The Dead Lands

Pouwhenua

Hongis weapon of choice.

Superficially similar in many respects to taiaha, the pouwhenua
lacks the taiahas ornamentation
and instead has a plain, smoke
or fire hardened point. Like the
taiaha, the striking edge along
the blade is blunt and used to
bludgeon the opponent.

Koikoi

When we first meet Wirepa and

his men, they are each carrying a
double-pointed koikoia plain spear
that is sharpened to a point at each
end. It averaged between six and
eight feet in length with the sharpened points hardened by fire.
Fraser with his new muse, James Rolleston, on the set of The Dead Lands (above). Early concept art for The
Dead Lands (above right). Hongi encounters the witches in the forest.

film River Queen infamously experienced

many disasters] and there is the traction,
isnt there, the idea of youre kinda going
mad as you work on a project
I love the whole idea of filmmakers
going up the river. I doubt Im spoiling it
for you to say the idea of a young boy going
into a place called the Dead Lands asking
for support from a mysterious, dissolute,
former legendary warrior is not a million
miles away from Apocalypse Now. There are

Every morning we made sure we were

able to go into this dark place by saying
a karakia. Going through a dark place,
you dont want it to swallow you up.

Five Films
That
Inspired
The Dead
Lands
50|mana magazine

Apocalypse Now
(1979)
Directed by Francis
Ford Coppola
Martin Sheen stars
as a young captain
who is sent into
the heart of the
Cambodian rainforest
to assassinate a US
colonel that has gone
renegade and thinks
he has become a god.

Ali (2001)
Directed by Michael
Mann
Manns biopic about
legendary fighter
Muhammad Ali,
starring Will Smith,
who garnered an
Oscar nomination for
the role.

Seven Samurai
(1954)
Directed by Akira
Kurasawa
A village under attack
by bandits recruits
seven unemployed
samurai to help them
defend themselves.
Has influenced films
from Dirty Dozen to A
Bugs Life.

references all over the place.

Fraser admits there were definitely challenges on The Dead Lands. We stayed sane
but its the hardest, the most challenging
movie that Ive made, easily. It was very
ambitious and we had tons of locations.
Fraser attributes his survival in The
Dead Lands to his dedicated cast and crew,
among them producer and kai urungi Tainui
Stephens who kept the production focused.
Every morning we made sure we were able
to go into this dark place by saying a karakia.
Going through a dark place, you dont want
it to swallow you up.
The film was lensed by cinematographer
(and longtime Fraser collaborator) Leon
Narbey. Fraser says Narbeys mana contributed to the success of the production.

Raiders of the
Lost Ark (1981)
Directed by Steven
Spielberg
The first of the
trilogy in which
archaeologist and
adventurer Indiana
Jones is hired by the
US government to
find the Ark of the
Covenant before the
Nazis.

Skyfall (2012)
Directed by Sam
Mendes
The latest James
Bond film, where
his loyalty to MI6 is
tested and we get a
glimpse into Bonds
past.

If you look at his whakapapa of movies

that hes been involved in, all of his incredible movies about Mori and Pacific Island
subjects. He has mana in the international
film industry and he has mana in Mori
circles. It was helpful when we were doing
post-production in London.
The sound mix in London was finished
less than two weeks before the films premiere in Toronto, and presented new
challenges. Frasers friend and collaborator Don McGlashan composed the score.
Hes a really good friend and our friendship was tested at times. We got a version of
the edit that we really loved and one of the
reasons that we were confident with it was
the music. His temporary score was really
rocking the story along. But we realised as
we progressed that it wasnt the right music
necessarily. So we had to pull our roles and
ask Don to change direction at quite a late
stage. That was pretty tense.
One of the unexpected delights of The
Dead Lands is it unspools completely in
ataahua te reo. The word toa (warrior) is said
a lot, with peculiar resonance for the director. I feel really strongly that this movie is
really very much me. I was a kid in England.
My dad was from Fiji, we felt very distant
from the Pacific and the name Toa seemed
incredibly unusual. So to have come to a
point where the word Toa is used frequently in this movie I get a buzz every time I
hear a character say that word. I feel really
grateful for the way things worked out.

Taiaha

Most of the characters favour

the more utilitarian spears, but
a rangatira from Hongis village,
Te Toko, carries a taiaha, probably the best-known Mori
weapon. Taiaha vary considerably in length and are also
known as maipi, hani and taieha
in other dialects. It has a carved
upoko arero (head and tongue)
on each side of the blade, with
eyes made of inlaid paua and
other shells.

only carried by those in authority and were the most revered

of all weapons due to the relative scarcity of pounamu in
Aoteroa (it is only found in the
South Island) and the craftsmanship required to create it.
Mira tuatini also makes an appearencea deadly patu with sharks
teeth lashed to the wooden handle to
created a sawed edge.

Toki poutangata

Along with his patu, The

Warrior carries a short axe with
a handle made from human
bone. It is believed that the
toki poutangata was originally
used for the ceremonial execution of captives, however The
Warrior uses it to slaughter
his enemies in hand-to-hand
combat.
READ Maori Weapons In Pre-European
New Zealand by Jeff Evans.
(See our review on page 79)

Patu and mere

Illustrations from The Coming of the Mori, Te Rangi Hiroa Sir Peter Buck (1949)

ten cups of coffee a day, he grins, drinking

another Dark Horse coffee.
Lawrence Makaore, in particular, had to
undertake a significant physical transformation to play the role, so Fraser joined him in
training as a bonding exercise. I committed to the four weeks of training as soon as
he arrived, just me and him together with
this guy Josh Randall and it was an amazing
part of the process for the director and the
actor going there together.
Fraser says he was delighted to see Makaore
develop as a character in the film. I identified with his character probably more than
with other characters in the movie. Kinda
lonely, on the edges of societyan outcast I
guessand the fact that I was able to tease
vulnerability out of Lawrence is one of the
most fulfilling things about the movie for me.
The whole summer, working with the
youthful, masculine energy that I enjoyed
so much as a young man. Touch rugby at
lunchtime and doing schoolboy sort of things.
James character Hongi is very sensitive and
draws the audience in, in a sort of Martin
Sheen Apocalypse Now performance.
Fraser makes a number of references
to Francis Ford Coppolas film Apocalypse
Now, and the equally famous documentary
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse
which records the disastrous production in
the Philippine jungle where everything that
could go wrong, did go wrong. Ive seen
it a hundred times. I love that movie and I
worked with Vincent [Ward, whose 2005

Patu and mere are short,

flat weapons tethered to
the wrist with a woven flax
handle. The Warrior wields
a patu pararoaa large,
unadorned patu usually
fashioned from sperm-whale bone
(pararoa). Mehe, the wahine
toa that Hongi and The
Warrior meet in the forest,
fights with two. Wirepas
men each carry a wooden
patu and Wirepas second-in-command Rangi
wields a kotiate, distinctive from other forms of patu for
the notchs in its edge, which
resemble a split human
liver (koti is cut and ate
is liver). Wirepa carries a
wahaika, which often had
human figures, or manaia, carved
onto the blade. Mere pounamu, as
carried by Hongis father Tane, were

Rangi (Xavier Horan) wields a kotiate.

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