Alister Barry charts Don Brash’s political downslide. By DANYL MCLAUCHLAN.

BASED on emails obtained from secret sources within the National Party, Nicky Hager’s book The Hollow Men was an expose of National’s 2005 election campaign under the leadership of former Reserve Bank governor Don Brash. Dr Brash resigned two days before the book was published, his position made untenable by Hager’s revelations that he had lied about his involvement with the Exclusive Brethren and their campaign against Labour and the Greens.

The book has been adapted for the screen – conveniently enough in time for this years general election! – by veteran political documentary maker Alister Barry, best known for his films Land of Plenty and Someone Else’s Country, two meticulously crafted critiques of the neo-liberal economic reforms carried out in New Zealand during the 1980’s and 90’s.

As a film The Hollow Men has a similar structure to Hager’s book; the narrative is roughly chronological, following Brash from his rise to power in the 2003 coup in which he defeated Bill English and won the leadership of the National Party to his narrow election defeat in September 2005 and resignation in late 2006. Barry manages to fit a huge amount of information into his film; issues of law and order, race relations, welfare, marketing and religious politics are all explored. As with the book, most of the information comes from the emails exchanged between Brash and his advisors.

Aware that his right-wing economic ideology would make him unelectable to most New Zealanders, a group of skilled political advisors and professional marketing consultants successfully sold Brash as a representative of mainstream New Zealand values, while his controversial Orewa speech on race relations distracted the public and the media from National’s economic policies. The Hollow Men documents the private strategies and secret agenda within the party and contrasts them with the public image the party promoted through a sophisticated advertising campaign.

While the book is about the shadowy advisors surrounding the National leader, the movie is very much about Brash, his political journey and the process of repackaging him to make him more palatable to the electorate. Brash dominates the screen for much of the movie, while National Party strategist Murry McCully and spin doctor Richard Long are less prominent but ever present. Additional advisors such as Brian Sinclair and Matthew Hooten make fleeting appearances; viewers who are not political junkies or who have not read the book will struggle to keep track of who all the titular hollow men are and what roles they play in the drama.

As with his previous films, Barry makes extensive use of archival footage accompanied by voice-over narration; various experts including political scientist Jon Johansson and Christchurch Press political editor Colin Espiner provide additional commentary (although Espiner agreed to be interviewed by Barry he was not told it was for The Hollow Men). Staged scenes and re-enactments flesh out the film.

The Hollow Men’s most serious flaw is its failure to find a way to communicate Hager’s leaked e-mails to the audience. Barry’s challenge was to convey large amounts of printed text through film; so we see people typing emails, we hear the narrator and various voice actors reading them aloud, excerpts appear as chunks of text on screen – but none of it really works. The decision to have the narrator reading out the emails blurs the line between the filmmakers editorial commentary and the written words of his subjects; while the actor’s voices all sound similar and often have a rather silly, cartoon-like snarl to them – as if Brash and his advisors were plotting to steal a diamond or kidnap a princess instead of abolish the Maori seats and privatise the health system.

Nowhere is this failure more apparent than the section in which Brash and his chief script-writer Peter Keenan exchange emails about the nature of perception, deceit and reality in modern politics. Arguably the heart of Hager’s book, the conversation between the two men should have been the dramatic centerpiece of the film. Barry has his voice actors read the emails aloud and cuts between the homes of Brash and Keenan as they mail each other back and forth, showing pictures of their swimming pools, their harbour views and so on. Maybe this seemed like a good idea at the time – or perhaps it would have worked if they lived in gigantic mansions instead of houses in the suburbs – but the visuals have no obvious connection to the narrative and since both voices sound similar and we’re not sure who lives in which house the entire sequence collapses in confusion and the point of the scene is lost.

Even more ill-conceived are the other shots of Peter Keenan. One of the most interesting characters in Hager’s book, the former economist privately disagreed with his leader’s racial policies even while he was writing the speeches promoting them. Keenan’s emails are quoted extensively in the film over shots of him wandering around inside his home watering his plants and reading the newspaper. The footage is hand-held and appears to have been shot covertly from a distance; Keenan does not seem to know he is being filmed and these sequences all have a queasy, paparazzi-cum-stalker like quality to them. Instead of questioning Kennan’s ethics as a speech-writer I found myself doubting Barry’s ethics as a filmmaker. He is one of the country’s most skilled and experienced documentary makers; surely he could have found a better way to depict his subject than this?

Barry’s strength has always been his artful use of archival footage and the best moments in The Hollow Men are the juxtaposed news clips and historical interviews; scenes of Kim Hill ferociously confronting Brash about his racial politics and Moana Jackson lecturing Gerry Brownlee on treaty issues are either delightful or dire, depending on which side of the political fence you stand. Barry’s films are often a treasure trove of the recent past and The Hollow Men is no exception.

The end of the film attempts to link current leader John Key with the same politics of deception practiced by Brash; the news that Key employed controversial Australian political consultants Crosby/Textor was revealed by Nicky Hager several weeks ago. The movie did not contain any new revelations about Key or his party.

The Hollow Men lurches around a lot, from a deft dissection of modern politics to clumsy anti-National propaganda to a riveting study of our very recent history. New Zealand has so very few political documentaries we need to treasure the ones we have, but key errors of judgement and the failure of the director and editor to effectively incorporate Hager’s source material into the framework of the movie are fatal flaws in what could have been a great film.

See also:
» Politics Gone Bad: The Hollow Men
» The Hollow Men: Theatre Review [A] [B]
» The Hollow Men: Book Review