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Too soon for a tale this raw

WIt is hard to balance sensitivity and accuracy with the demands of entertainment ...

e probably have to accept that someone, some day, will make a dramatic feature film about the appalling events in Christchurch on March 15, 2019. That person may or may not be expat New Zealand film-maker Andrew Niccol, whose proposed film, They Are Us, became public knowledge only in early June. But as we learned this week, it was pitched to the New Zealand Film Commission less than two months after the attacks on two mosques that claimed 51 lives and has been planned for two years.

Some will see that haste as unseemly, even opportunistic. Wisely, the Film Commission is reconsidering how it treats sensitive content in future. Niccol announced yesterday that the project is on hold for more consultation.

Only public taste can really tell us how soon is too soon. It also depends on the treatment. Re-enactments of atrocities must meet a higher standard than films that allude only to events, or documentaries that use existing footage.

The two best-known dramas about September 11 appeared five years later. Two films about Anders Breivik’s attacks in Norway appeared seven years later. A New Zealand film about Aramoana waited 16 years. An Australian film about the 1996 Port Arthur massacre has only just been released and doesn’t depict the killings.

The complicated ethics of re-enacting greater atrocities, such as the Holocaust or the Cambodian killing fields, have almost created their own sub-genre of film criticism. It is hard to balance sensitivity and accuracy with the demands of entertainment, which might cut corners, revise stories or, as with They Are Us, invent a new character and amend an existing one to make a point about gun control for US audiences.

If the Muslim community of Christchurch exerted creative control over what is, first and foremost, their own story, it would look very different from what we know about They Are Us. While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s leadership was admirable, she agreed she is not the central character of this story.

Nor should the killings themselves be depicted. A leaked screenplay showed that Niccol allocated 17 pages, equalling 17 minutes, to the shootings. While he now claims there were ‘‘placeholder’’ scenes in the script, it seems remarkable that a project that claims to praise New Zealand’s response should contradict one of its essential features, which is the banning of the killer’s livestream video and the erasure of his name.

A dramatic re-enactment risks being every bit as traumatic as the banned livestream itself.

Paul Greengrass, the director of a film about Breivik, 22 July, previously directed films about the ‘‘Bloody Sunday’’ incident in Northern Ireland and September 11. He consulted family members and reportedly won their support, and said that ‘‘the people who rightfully decide whether it’s the right time or the wrong time are the families directly affected’’. But even he was not immune to criticism from relatives of survivors about omissions and emphasis. Niccol’s pause is a recognition that he has not consulted as thoroughly as Greengrass.

And finally there is tone. Within the emails released this week, there is a comment that They Are Us could be ‘‘the first inspiring film about a massacre’’. This glib summary of an atrocity that remains raw for many, in which innocent victims would become bit players in an inspirational story written by those with no connection to the events, is crass in the extreme.

Opinion

en-nz

2021-07-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-07-24T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuff.pressreader.com/article/283747022172714

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