Something Thoughtful

Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.  

                                                    BEST OF THE DYING YEAR.   

We are now in November and the year is dying rapidly, so I thought in this posting I would list some of the things I most enjoyed this year. I do not rank them in any particular order.

It was stimulating to see some films that were actually intended for grown-ups. Not too long ago, Martin Scorsese said, correctly, that the movie theatres were now deluged with what he called “theme-park” movies – in other words, those super-hero movies that appeal mainly to feeble-minded 15-year-olds. Extravagant special effects, big explosions, titanic fights involving alien beasts or heroes with magical powers etc. etc. etc. just like the thrills of theme-park rides or computer games. Pure kids’ stuff. So what a pleasure to see Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer which, even if it stretches history a bit, at least gives a coherent account of one of the physicists who designed the atom bomb and who lived to understand the ethical problems with it. And also a pleasure to see Martin Scorsese’s own film Killers of the Flower Moon. More than one reviewer has complained that the film (all three hours and twenty-six minutes) is overlong, but I think the length is justified and Scorsese does honour to the native Americans whom it depicts. A further delight with films this year came when our son paid a subscription for us to watch films on the MUBI platform, which allowed us to appreciate many off-beat films, including such classics as Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows”, Agnes Varda’s “Vagabonde”, the Iranian film “The Wind Will Carry Us”, the Armenian film “The Cut” (about the 1916 genocide of Armenians) and other films worth treasuring. There are still films for grown-ups if you look for them.

Pleasurable road trips in New Zealand. This year, we visited Hamilton again, enjoyed the Hamilton Gardens again, but particularly enjoyed driving a bit out from the city to appreciate the Sculpture Park – an assembly of representative and non-representative sculptures, some serious, some satirical, some almost monumental, set in the bush adjoining a farm. A pleasant trip to Whangarei allowed us to enjoy summer weather, a walk along a long, long beach and to appreciate properly and at leisure the art of Hundertwasser. We visited Rotoroa Island on a hot day trip and had reason to spend some time in Taihape. All good fun. But one day, on an impulse, my wife and I decided to go on a crazy day-trip to somewhere neither of us had ever visited before, by which I mean Dargaville. Please don’t scold me. I’ve been an Aucklander all my life, save for three years working elsewhere in New Zealand or journeying overseas for a few years, and I have travelled much in NZ; but it just so happens that neither of us had ever visited Dargaville. So off we went one morning, taking the almost-two-hour drive from Auckland to the Far North. Okay, we’d heard negative comments about the place, coming mainly from Auckland sophisticates who assume they are superior to anybody from the smaller towns. Yes, the drive was long. Yes, reaching Dargaville one has to cross the flood plain that is Ruawai. Yes, as we crossed the long bridge we noted how muddy the Dargaville River is. But we found the place delightful. Without being too patronising, it seemed like a town from an earlier age – maybe the 1950s or 1960s. Nice memorial park to walk in, and a memorial statue of a Croatian pioneer at the bottom of the main street. Nice café to have lunch in. Excellent Kauri Museum, with great exhibits of Maori, Pakeha (a lot about Croatians) and other settlers as well as some emphasis on sailing ships and riverboats, once the lifeline for the town. The museum is on a high hill on the other side of the river from most of the town. Looking down from that height, the sight of the curve of the river is majestic. So in the five or six hours we spent in Dargaville, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The only snag was a sudden, fierce rainstorm that battered us on the two-hour drive back to Auckland, forcing us to pull over to the side of the road until visibility was restored. Wonderful day anyway. And weren’t we mad to do it in one day?

The pleasure of a stage-play. My sister had bought two tickets for the theatre but her friend was indisposed and could not come – so she generously suggested I come with her instead. The play was Switzerland, about the last days of the chain-smoking, foul-mouthed, bitchy novelist Patricia Highsmith. It was a two-hander. There’s Patricia Highsmith, writer of hard-boiled and somewhat unsettling crime stories (that whole Ripley series where the smooth, manipulative con-man gets away with it) and there’s a mysterious man who, unwelcomely,  comes to visit her claiming he wants to make a publisher’s contract for her next book. But that’s only the beginning of their ferocious battle of wits and verbal sparring, and of course it all goes in a direction we do not expect. So what was so great about it? Basically, it was the spot-on acting of Sarah Peirse, catching the sharp wit, the narcissism and the sheer nastiness of the author. Whenever I think of Sarah Peirse, I think of her role in the film Heavenly Creatures, where she played, convincingly, a very sympathetic and bewildered mother who simply could not understand what was wrong with her daughter. In Switzerland she played a completely different sort of woman, and very persuasively. This was virtuoso acting. Brilliant. And as the mysterious male visitor, Jarred Blakiston was very good too.

Excellent exhibitions. Early in 2023, I had the great pleasure of visiting the Auckland museum a number of times and took in exhibitions, having signed on as a member of the museum. It was a great pleasure to walk thoughtfully around the gallery of images taken by the late New Zealand photographer Robin Morrison. He had a fine knack for presenting a town or a landscape in the most unexpected way, and in the process revealing the nature and habits of people. Quite stunning was the exhibition titled “Egypt in the Time of the Pharaohs”, involving many real artifacts and also, in very appropriate terms, debunking some common misconceptions about ancient Egypt. (The previous year, the museum had an exhibition on Stonehenge, which also defused much common nonsense.) For me at any rate, the best of “Egypt in the Time of the Pharaohs” were the careful explanations given to the status of various gods and their functions. And I admired the plucky way that the placards explained why they deliberately excluded Tutankhamun and Cleopatra from the exhibition. And away from the museum, in the Auckland Art Gallery, there was a formidable and very engaging “First Peoples Art of Australia” exhibition, being works by Aborigines. Varied as all art exhibitions are, but much that was stunning, whether in traditional styles or in European-influenced styles. My attraction was caught most by a very large, colourful canvas which, in a non-representative way, told the traditional Aboriginal story of the seven sisters in the night sky. It is interesting that so many separate cultures have conceived a similar story – the Greek Pleaides, the Maori Matariki etc.  

Of course, being in a good mood at the moment, I could tell you many other positive things I enjoyed this year, but they would be related mainly to family and friends and my regular visits, as a guide, to the open bird-sanctuary island Tiritiri Matangi. But somehow I think these things would be of little interest to you. So here I end.