Reviewed by Tim Wong

CERTAINLY the most hardened New Zealand film to emerge since Once Were Warriors, Out of the Blue is signposted by a series of innocuous coastal panoramas that belie its underlying trauma. At regular intervals, director Robert Sarkies reverts back to these sites of tidal calm – idyllic shorelines, undulating landscapes, blazoned sunsets on the horizon – as if to provide respite amidst the unfurling tragedy of November 13, 1990. But as touristy images synonymous with the ‘greenbelt’ of New Zealand cinema, they are in their postcard ubiquity a timely reminder of the darker stories that remain hidden and untold. In its scarcity, a film of this nature also highlights a reluctance to tell such stories, if not an unwillingness to abandon the safety net of ‘regionalism’ in favour of a less conservative, more divisive filmmaking – the kind freely divorced from a pervading national stereotype of scenic beauty and perpetually friendly people.


Out of the Blue boldly, assuredly goes where few New Zealand films have gone before in confronting this dichotomy between the nation’s ‘100% Pure’ (self) consciousness, and if you will, its darkened subconscious of suppressed tragedies and terrible things present and past – in this instance, one man’s propensity for unspeakable violence. Just as Lee Tamahori panned away from ‘Middle Earth’ to reveal a dishevelled, urban bleakness in Once Were Warriors’ opening shot, Sarkies curtails Aramoana’s picturesque, using it only to underline a certain cultural imperviousness to the possibility of terrorism and mass murder at home. So often seduced by Aotearoa’s natural splendour, this is a film more concerned with what lies beneath the long white cloud. We ignore it at our own peril.

Indeed, what’s infinitely disturbing here is the sheer disbelief that accompanies every action and reaction to the massacre; the residents portrayed are understandably shocked, but it’s in the police who respond to the shootings – ill-equipped, frightened and hesitant, they are not the trigger-happy enforcers of American cop movies – that proceedings gather a surreal, unfathomable, and very human terror. Seldom do the horrors of Columbine or Beslan hit close to home, relegated along with other mass murders and suicide bombings to the world pages with a numbing regularity. But of sudden and unexpected magnitude, David Gray’s rampage – leaving thirteen dead – penetrates deep, wounding not only the people of Aramoana, but the psyche of New Zealand as a sheltered South Pacific haven. Though this film shares its name with a gaudy Delta Goodrem power ballad, as a pointed reference to unforeseeably tragic events, it could not be more appropriate.

Of some debate is the film’s study of David Gray, which briefly derails into psychopathic tropes via grating, low-drone ambience and visually distorted perspectives (namely, Gray’s altercation at the bank). As the film’s villain, he is noticeably outcast – we see him laughed at by children, berated by restless neighbours, and disturbed by suspicious police officers – while in a further effort to plunge us into the headspace of a killer, Sarkies forces the camera uncomfortably close, either in direct proximity, or by smudging his surroundings into an indiscriminate blur. In light of the Columbine-esque Elephant, what this lacks in subtlety and a total absence of reasoning, it makes up for in its ever-so-concise portrayal of a gun-collecting loner, whose exact motives for murder are never defined, hazed-out somewhere in between a shallow focus of anger and paranoia. And the legacy of Gus Van Sant reverberates elsewhere, with the killings, viewed sparingly and from a helpless distance, recalling the chilling arbitrariness of that film, laying bare Aramoana’s streets in the same way Elephant’s high school corridors were randomly flushed out.

In its distilled, composed articulation of tragedy amidst a prolonged drought of truly courageous local films, Out of the Blue can perhaps in time, be considered something of a watershed in New Zealand cinema. It is far too important to avoid, though may be too painful for some. It is at once paralysing and cathartic. I don’t think I’ll ever see it again.

See also:
» Out of the Blue (DVD)