 | From the Cinema of Poetry to the Cinema of Unease: Brad Mcgann's In My Father's Den By Duncan Petrie "For me the most powerful films are, and always will be, those of a singular gaze where the human eye can be felt, where it is allowed to go uninhibited, without question and without anyone second guessing its accuracy." (1) Introduction: A Great New Zealand Film
The above quote is from an appreciation by New Zealand filmmaker Brad McGann of Terrence Malick’s magisterial period drama Days of Heaven. McGann reveals that when he set off for the remote plains of Central Otago in September 2003 to begin shooting his own debut feature he decided to take an ex-rental VHS of Malick’s film with him as a kind of talisman While any direct connection between the two works is moot, the spirits appear to have looked favourably on the newcomer in that his film, In My Father’s Den, is easily the most accomplished cinematic achievement to come out of New Zealand in a decade. A consummate cinephile, McGann’s vision of the virtues of the medium are derived from the wisdom and insight of the great French cine-poet Robert Bresson, contained in his book of epigrams, Notes on Cinematography (2), which has proved inspirational to other filmmakers including Jean-Luc Godard and Lynne Ramsay. In My Father’s Den may bear little resemblance to the formal austerity of Bresson’s cinema, but McGann’s reiteration of key terms in the published interviews that accompanied his film’s release – stillness, intimacy, understatement, authenticity – suggest an affinity rooted in a particular set of aesthetic priorities. These also set him apart from the current penchant for digital special effects, a heightened visual style, frenetic editing and inter-textual playfulness that link the high budget ‘event’ movies of George Lucas and Peter Jackson, the cult classics of Quentin Tarrantino, the Coen brothers and Danny Boyle, and the foreign language crossover films of Jean Pierre Jeunet and Zhang Yimou. |
