Taratoa Stappard didn’t necessarily think he was writing a horror film when he first began to formulate what would eventually be his debut feature “Mārama.” Of course he knew in advance that there were terrifying elements in the story he set out to tell with the young Maori woman of its title being beckoned to Victorian England in 1859 for cryptic reasons, well out of her element so far from New Zealand yet still very much in the clutches of a colonial mindset, yet leaning into genre seemed like the only way to do justice to how exactly she must’ve felt.
“The moment I started, there was one particular image I remember, and it was an image of a Victorian gentleman sitting in front of his collection, mounted upon the wall behind him, of preserved Māori heads, 29 of them and I might’ve started off writing a drama, but it became a horror,” says Stappard.
The writer/director has proudly carved out an entirely new genre with his first feature, dubbing it “Māori gothic horror” and recasting the idea of a haunted house as a shadow that follows an entire civilization as he imagines the plight of Mārama (Ariana Osborne) or Mary, as she’s known by most after being separated from her family at an early age and by extension, her indigenous roots. Curiosity supersedes her better judgment when she receives an invite to Hawkson Manor from Thomas, a man claiming to have details about her parents, yet when she arrives across continents – told ominously that she’s facing a steep climb ahead when she gets off the carriage – she is instead greeted by Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens) as the head of the household with little idea of where Thomas may be. She may not know a lot about Nathaniel, but he seems to know plenty about her, trying to ingratiate himself by mentioning he’s a former orphan himself and offering her a lucrative job as a governess to his young niece Anne (Evelyn Towersy).
Yet something definitely seems amiss in a place where displays of Māori culture in the Victorian mansion suggest that her host isn’t looking to honor them, but to celebrate their conquer, culminating in a grand dinner party on the estate in which Mary’s protest against an exaggerated skit making a mockery of her heritage is simply thought of as part of the show by the guests assembled. Mary needn’t worry about ghosts lurking about the property, but what proves chilling is the slow, steady drip of details she can suss out about what happened to the rest of her family, including relatives she never knew existed, thanks to how effectively her history had been wiped out and Stappard crafts a wrenching thriller from her desperate search to know more while avoiding the potentially lethal traps of what she can’t yet know. The film has been unsettling audiences from its premiere at the Toronto Film Festival last fall on and as “Mārama” opens in theaters far and wide beginning this weekend, the director spoke about how he was able to draw on his own family tree for inspiration to tell this story about a dark chapter in Māori history, creating collaborations that would forge cultural bonds as well as authenticity and what it was like bringing the film back home to New Zealand.
How did this come about?
The main inspiration for me was my mother. I was born in New Zealand, but my father was from the UK and came from Yorkshire all the way out to New Zealand, and met my mother who is Māori, and they had me. Then we moved away very quickly, so I had no real significant lived experience in Aotearoa, and certainly not as a Māori in Aotearoa, but it was my mother who kept me kind of vaguely connected to it with the stories she’d tell about our tupuna, our ancestors. And maybe because it was my mother telling the story, the wahine toa —the strong Māori women — who intrigued me the most. And there was one in particular that I really was interested to always hear the stories around, and it was my mother’s kuia, [her] grandmother, who was born in 1880, and she was an identical twin. Her name was Rangiriri, and her identical twin sister was Teroorua. Their anglicized names were Aileen and Georgina, but I prefer Rangiriri, which actually means “angry sky.” Rangi is sky and riri is angry, so it’s a cool name for a start, right?
Anyway, they were twins and at the age of 16 in 1896, were expelled from their third school, and like me, their English father and Māori mother, sort of disowned them, right? And in what I think must have at that time been a defiant cultural action, they both took on the sacred facial tattoo for Māori women, moko kowae, and remembering they were beautiful, identical 16-year-olds in the first place, here they’ve got these moko now. And they became very popular as guides. My great grandmother went on to lead what was called a concert party, a group of young Māori women, including my grandmother and my great aunt. There were nine of them, and the group was called Princess Rangiriri and Her Nine Māori Maidens. And she took them on a tour from New Zealand through Australia and they performed in San Francisco on the way to England, and this would have been 1910s [thereabouts], but that for me was a spark. [I thought], what must it have been like for my great grandmother, a staunch Māori woman with this very definitive cultural statement of a facial tattoo, to take this group of young women around the world and basically sing and dance and perform for those people who are colonizing her people? They were extraordinary women.
Not having had the lived experience of a Māori in in Aotearoa New Zealand ever in my life, I thought, well, maybe I can tell a story about a displaced Māori, maybe a bit like myself, not that I was displaced, but someone who was seeking their identity. But obviously Mary is an orphan. She’s seeking information about where she comes from and the horrific irony is what she comes to discover in the film. But setting the story in the UK felt like something I could speak to because that’s where I’ve spent most of my life. I don’t sound like a New Zealander and my boys were born and raised in London. But most Māori films by Māori filmmakers are amazing films, but they tend to, from what I’ve seen, take place in Aotearoa. And it doesn’t take much to research, but the fact is Māori are voyagers. They got on those boats that were coming out to New Zealand in the first place to do whaling, and they went the other way. They thought, “Moby Dick, there’s a Māori character right there.” They went back to America, they went to Europe, they went to England in the 1820s, ’30s. And that became interesting to me. I thought it’s not beyond the bounds of credibility to think that a self-confident young woman, upon receiving a one-way ticket and a promise of information about who she is, might just get on a boat and travel for 73 days — because that’s what it took in those days — to get to England to try and find out about who she is. So it’s about identity, but also the horrors of colonization and cultural appropriation as well. Those were the themes that were coming together.
The party scene is really a standout where you’ve got every department firing on all cylinders. What was it like to put together?
The party sequence was two-day shoot, and by far the most nervous, nervewracking sequence that I have ever shot in my life. It was also the most cathartic and exciting because I shot it sequentially, intentionally, so that we ended up shooting the pivotal moment at the very end of that sequence. It all worked brilliantly, but it all came together for a load of different reasons. I was working with absolute top of their game specialist artists, whether it was the production designer, Nick Williams, the costume designer Sarah Voon, my DOP, Gin Loane or equally significant, the hair and makeup and prosthetics designer Stef Knight. I had worked with Gin on my short film, so we had a relationship, but the other three specialists were all thanks to my producer, Sharlene George, putting me in touch with them and persuading them to work with me because it was my debut feature.
They made sure the costumes are right, the space is right, the lighting’s right, the wigs are right. The makeup is right, horrific makeup on some of those characters but it’s also down to the actors and I want to give big props to Erroll Shand who plays Jack Fenton, and what he did when he started doing what he does in that sequence. We had what 25 extras and extras are brilliant, but they’re not always actors and and don’t have as much of an investment in the film necessarily. Sometimes it can go wrong, but when we were shooting that, they were into it and I think that’s thanks to what Errol brought to his character of Jack. He went full on, 100%, and it just buoyed everyone else and then to have the honor of ending it with the performance that Ariana gave as Marama at the end was breathtaking. It was just such a pleasure.
What sold you on Ariana to shoulder this?
Multiple, multiple auditions, obviously, because there are lots of excellent young Wāhine Māori, but it just nudged naturally more and more towards Ariana. I was still in England when I saw first tapes and hers stuck out. In particular, I remember thinking how confident she was at doing so little. She was very still in her audition, and it sounds like a simple thing. But you can tell when someone’s switched off and doing nothing because they look like they’re doing nothing, but you can also tell when someone’s fully engaged, but they’re [still]. She did all that and it jumped out at me. I was really excited to meet her for the first time. It was always a case that whoever’s going to play that role had better be top of their game because we shot for 24 days and that character had to be there for 23 and she showed up. She was brilliant.
What was it like working with a crew with both Māori and non-Māori artisans? It must spark interesting conversations.
Nick Williams, the production designer isn’t Māori, but worked very closely with Māori, whether it was a carver, for example, or a props specialist when any of the treasures or artifacts that were used, needed to be handled in a certain way. They needed to be blessed, for example, in and out of the set, even if they were produced out of some other material for the purposes of the shoot only and weren’t genuine. But a lot of the jewelry, for example, was genuine and they just needed to be handled very, very carefully. And Nick had [some] experience of doing that, working on the fabulous Māori director Lee Tamahori’s final film which was called “The Convert” with Guy Pearce. So historically he was aware of what was what and had lots of contacts within the Māori world who could advise him, so it’s about collaborating and making sure you give the necessary space in respect to those artifacts and you don’t appropriate them. It’s a lot of work, but it’s absolutely crucial.
It’s just cultural protection that we made sure to give the cast especially, especially Ariana, and the crew, Doing things like starting the day with a karakia, a Māori prayer, just to open the day. And closing with a karakia became very important on some of the heavier days. But it was a good rhythm to get into anyway. I’d experienced that on my short film “Taumanu,” and it felt this is the right way to do it. So even though we originally had intended to shoot in the UK, it worked out really well that we shot in New Zealand, and we worked with many more Māori crew than we would have if we’d shot in the UK and even a couple of extra Māori characters and cast, I was able to write into the story. So it worked out well, but it was about maintaining a cultural sensitivity and protection for what is a very heavy film.
Is it true the score was a bit of a collaboration as well?
I’d had the privilege of working with Karl Steven on my previous short film, and what I love about Karl, who co-composed the score with a Māori composer called Rob Thorne. And Rob provided what are called taonga pūoro, that literally translated means, musical treasures, or Māori traditional instrumentation. It might be a nose flute or the stones that are tapped. Rob provided those and Karl brought the more classical gothic music. Those were the two key levels, but there was another subliminal layer that Karl had suggested to me [after saying] “When I was back in Sweden last year, I went to an EDM conference, and one of the instruments that was being demonstrated was something called a halldorophone. Have you ever heard of it? It’s basically like a cello, but it’s been pinned with four pickups, one under each string, and you can control the feedback on each string as it plays.”
That is a freaky sound. Unfortunately, it’s an instrument that’s designed by an Icelandic man. And there’s 15 of them in the world, but I’m glad we recorded the halldorophone. While we were there, we recorded all the more Gothic traditional music with the Icelandic orchestra, which is a fantastic orchestra, so I’m very fond of the score.
What’s it been like seeing this get out in the world, particularly in New Zealand?
New Zealand was honestly the location that I was perhaps most anxious about, like, how’s it going to be perceived, especially the Māori audience? I saw it about seven different times on a road trip and at the preview and at the premiere, so it was seven different audiences in different cinemas all around the North Island and it was just great. It was so affirming. I had a lot of support and a lot of people saying things as basic as like, “Well done” to “Thank you for making this story that needs to be told” and that meant everything to me. So I can keep that on board for the every now and again when you get a [bad] review, I just remember what Māori audiences told me in Aotearoa New Zealand. I hang onto that and I’m grateful to have been there for when it was released in Aotearoa.
“Mārama” opens on April 17th across the country, including at the IFC Center in New York and the Laemmle Monica Film Center and Laemmle Glendale in Los Angeles and expands in the weeks to follow. A full list of theaters and dates is here.