Vincent Ward (director)

A State of Siege

At the age of 21, in 1978, he shoots "A State of Siege", a medium-length film that adapts a novel by his countrywoman Janet Frame. A ghost story that goes with amazing ease from local costumbrismo to the mental torture of the protagonist. Everything in a house of Lynchian style, where the backyard has been devoured by the weeds, the hallways by the darkness and the rooms by the disturbing memory of the deceased mother of the protagonist. The atmosphere will grow in anguish with a soundtrack left to the own noises of the house and nature, while the dialogues will be saved for a terrifying telephone conversation. Even noticing at times the amateur of the shooting and youth of the director, few things so suggestive have been filmed by someone of his age. Ward has described Siege as his first "public" film. At least five predated it. While working towards a Diploma in Fine Arts (with Honours) at Ilam in Christchurch, he'd found his interest drifting from painting and sculpture towards filmmaking and animation.

In Spring One Plants Alone

After graduating, Ward went travelling – not for the last time – searching for inspiration. Keen to learn more about Māori traditions, he ended up at the house of an old Māori woman named Puhi, and her mentally-ill son. Ward stayed on and off for two years. The result of his commitment: award-winning 45-minute documentary "In Spring One Plants Alone" (1981). This documentary was made over the course of 18 months that lasted the follow-up of the old Maori woman Puhi and her schizophrenic son Niki. Images full of the saturated greens of the New Zealand landscape and the 16mm., future genesis of "Rain of the Children" and possibly of all his filmography. The nocturnal sequence, with the camera inside a car that advances illuminating the passage of two ghostly horses to stop just before Niki, made it clear that if something had Ward, was an enviable talent and very particular for the image.

Vigil

His debut feature-length movie, Vigil (1984), follows "a solitary child who imagines, fantasises and dreams". Partly inspired by Ward's partly rural upbringing in the Wairarapa, it was shot in the Taranaki after exhaustive searches for the right location, and the right person (Fiona Kay) to play the central girl. The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey won major awards at both the Australian and New Zealand film industry awards and has a freshness, depth and vitality that keep them alive, well and attracting audiences today.

Childhood, without a doubt, is an important theme in his work, but Ward's approach is far from softness. "Vigil" is not "Mouchette" (Robert Bresson, 1967), but there is the same inclination for hardness over the kind things, for the traumatic abandonment of childhood to deal with all the evil. Beginning with sex, death and the recurrent absence (or, if not, conflicting presence) of the father figure. The emblem image of Ward's cinema is found in the faces, in their fusion or contrast with the landscape. In this case in the little girl Toss, always under his father's balaclava, denying the loss, trying to remain under his protection. A face that will later be stripped, not before having been splashed (a circumstance repeated in other Ward films) by the blood of a sheep slaughtered on its arms. "Vigil", plays brilliantly with the sexual and morphological doubt of puberty as a visual extension of the oedipal: the girl who repels the mother, while seeking to recover the father by a double way: with a male substitute and with the own physical appearance.

The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

Ward's planned follow-up was "The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey" (1981), which utilises "medieval" blue and orange tones to capture a group of 14th century Cumbrian villagers after they tunnel through the earth, and find themselves in modern day Auckland. Ward described the film to The Evening Post as "a muscular adventure story, a quest film" – and also as a collision, a "juxtaposition of two time periods which enables you to see your own time through fresh eyes".

"The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey" is perhaps his most famous film. It is not an eighties youth film, nor an ordinary adventure movie, it is much more audacious. Griffin, the male version of Toss, will look for his brother to the father, and as it could not be otherwise, they will end up facing each other in a medieval and inhospitable Cumbria where austerity, the fantastic component (witches, ghosts, diseases, superstitions), the black and white, the rudimentary of the production and the almost guttural accent of the actors, remind the Scottish neighbor: Macbeth. The relative success of "The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey", is not enough to chain movies and continues spacing them with an approximate frequency of one per lustrum.

Alien³

Vincent Ward's Alien³ was a 1990 script draft for a sequel to Aliens, written by Ward and John Fasano. Ward and Fasano were the fourth and fifth of ten different writers to tackle the Alien3 project, and their unused script is by far the most famous of those created for the film. It is set on a monastery satellite called Arceon (not to be confused with Acheron), which is largely constructed of wood and crewed by an order of reclusive monks who have rejected all modern technology. Much of the plot and several of the characters from Ward's script were fused with the prison setting from David Twohy's proposed script to form the basis of Alien3 as it was ultimately made. Ward's screenplay was written after Twohy's proposed script was rejected, and was followed by the first draft of what would become the final shooting script, written by Walter Hill and David Giler.

Map of the Human Heart

Landscape is a strong feature in Ward's work. He has won a reputation for challenging locations. His actors have performed in caves, atop hot air balloons, in chest deep snow in the Southern Alps, and on Arctic ice floes. The ice floes were first visited by Ward en route to his $20 million third feature, Map of the Human Heart (1993). Ranging from Canada to the skies over WWll Germany, the film charts the ebbs and flows of a relationship between an Inuit boy, a Métis girl and a visiting British cartographer. Screening as a work in progress at Cannes in 1992, it was later nominated for best film at the Australian Film Institute Awards. American critic Roger Ebert praised its unpredictability, sense of adventure – and "two of the most astonishing romantic scenes I've ever seen in a movie".

In 1993 releases "Map of the Human Heart", a Canadian production that could well have been New Zealander. Ward moves his obsessions to the Arctic Circle, writes himself the story and is deeply involved in the production. Again the isolation, the passage of time (the film covers from 1931 to 1992) and the stifling weight of a tribal tradition subjected to magical thinking. Also the family problems, the projection of the father in a stranger (the cartographer Walter) that will end up exercising the role of traitor. Formula completed here in a double sense when converting the child, over the years, into another lost father. And, above all, there is the stigma of the mestizo in three ways: an Eskimo, an Indian and their future daughter. Ward himself, born of the cultural and religious mixture of a German Jewess and an Irish Catholic, declares himself identified with the figure of the mestizo, so frequent in his films.

What Dreams May Come

During seven years in and out of Hollywood, Ward developed multiple projects, and took some small acting roles. He signed on to direct What Dreams May Come (1998), after injecting the plot idea that gives the film its unusual painterly look. Released in the United States on 2600 screens, the tale of a man (Robin Williams) searching for his departed wife in heaven and hell scored mixed reviews, solid box office returns – and a 1999 Academy Award, for its special effects. Earlier Ward had been offered "Alien³"; his concept of a world ruled by monks was brainstormed on the flight to LA. Creative differences ultimately saw the film directed by David Fincher, but elements of Ward's storyline were retained.

"What Dreams May Come", which is an adaptation of a work by Richard Matheson, is his only American film, without forgetting his mysterious participation and dismissal from "Alien³" (David Fincher, 1992). "What Dreams May Come" is a movie on the edge. That walking on the edge, almost always ended talking well of the filmmakers who went through it, without fear of falling or excess, turning over scenes that slow down and they turn the presumed laughter of contempt into something emotional, the comic in tragic and vice versa. "What Dreams May Come" is an adventure worth seeing, where time is again vulnerable to fate and fantasy: "Dreams do not respect time. Time does not count." What Dreams May Come was nominated for two Academy Awards (best art direction-set decoration and best visual effects) and won the Oscar for best visual effects in 1999. It grossed more than US 200 million (all territories).

The Last Samurai

The 2003 epic, "The Last Samurai" was a film inspired by a project developed by Ward. The film was in development for nearly four years and after approaching several directors, including Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Weir, he became executive producer. In the end, the job of director went to Edward Zwick.

River Queen

In 2005 he returns to New Zealand and recovers his more immediate history, that of the bloody British colonization during the second half of the 19th century. All the constants of Ward come back here with greater force, condensed in the "modern" formation of a country with a deep "primitive" root. River Queen (2005) is a film difficult to understand and it understands the coldness or bewilderment that can get to wake up. Not because of the presumed exoticism of the culture portrayed, nor because of the way of filming and showing certain sequences, not even because of the narrative mechanisms employed, as classic as the peripeteia of the trip and the river, but because of the sentimental swing of the protagonists, especially Sarah O'Brien, the Irish colonist played by Samantha Morton. The film won respectable audiences at home, but initial reviews crossed the gamut, and tales of the troubled winter shoot dominated the film's release.

Rain of the Children

"Rain of the Children" (2008), is perceived as one of those films in which the filmmaker on duty is delivered in a special way, with an absolute sincerity, driven by a pressing need to tell. In addition, it forms a curious triangle with "My Winnipeg" and "Of Time and The City". The three full of anguish, reflection, fantasy, reality, admiration and ghosts. Fascinating mix of autobiography, fiction and diverse tendencies of the contemporary archive documentary, "Rain of the Children" is not limited to retaking the story of Puhi and Nikki, who will also do it with images (many unpublished) of the original film. Ward extends it in time, backwards and forwards, using, in other resources, interviews with relatives and acquaintances, and fictional fragments full of charm. A memorable puzzle in which the director himself will act as narrator. The time comes for it to be himself, without intermediaries, who tells us the story. The film has been described as Ward's most personal film to date in which he tells the story of Puhi, an elderly Maori woman who was the subject of his earlier documentary in Spring One Plants Alone (1981). Puhi lived in a remote part of the Urewera Ranges caring for her violent schizophrenic son Niki and Ward recorded their day to day lives in his documentary. Puhi's story and background haunted him for years and in Rain of the Children he brings her to life.

Chosen by the audience from among 250 feature films, Rain of the Children won the Grand Prix at Era New Horizons Film Festival. The film was nominated for best director and won best composer at the Qantas Film and TV Awards in New Zealand. Vincent Ward was also nominated for best director at the Australian Directors Guild Awards^[3] for Rain of the Children.

By Vincent Ward

• The Navigator, A Medieval Odyssey. Screenplay (Faber and Faber: 1989).
• Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes (Auckland: Heinemann Reed, 1990).
• The Past Awaits, people, images, film. Large format, full colour photographic book of images and stories (published in New Zealand by Craig Potton Publishing, 2010).
• Inhale | Exhale. Large format. Full color reproductions of Vincent Wards artwork from his 2011–2012 exhibitions (Breath Govett Brewster Art Gallery, Inhale | Exhale Gus Fisher Gallery and Pah Homestead, Auckland Station Shanghai Biennale) (Ron Sang Publications, 2012).

About Vincent Ward

• Making the Transformational Moment in Film: Unleashing the Power of the Image (with the Films of Vincent Ward), by Dan Fleming, (Michael Wiese Productions, 2011).