Men for all season

Reporoa rugby stalwart ''Broomy'' on the farm. Photo supplied.
Reporoa rugby stalwart ''Broomy'' on the farm. Photo supplied.
A new film about heartland New Zealand provides a rare insight into the changing shed, writes Tom McKinlay.

Kelvin, an ageing prop forward in the Reporoa rugby team, sits on a cow in the cold, misty morning administering an intravenous drip, having just helped in a difficult birth.

All the while he shepherds his 6-year-old twins, who are back at the farmhouse, off to school via smartphone.

''Uniforms on first, make your lunch, have breakfast, then find your rugby gear,'' the solo father says, as if imparting lessons for life.

It's one scene among many in new New Zealand documentary The Ground We Won that zeroes in on the contemporary rural male circumstance.

The film, while focusing on a season in which Reporoa strives for rugby redemption, is less about sport than about manhood, among other bigger themes, say its makers, Christopher Pryor and Miriam Smith.

The husband-and-wife team previously teamed up to make How Far Is Heaven, the 2012 documentary about the Sisters of Compassion in Jerusalem, on the Whanganui River.

In fact, the pair stumbled upon Reporoa and its rugby club on trips home during the making of the earlier film and began to talk to the community about letting their cameras in.

About 200 hours of filming later, The Ground We Won provides 90 minutes of candid and unvarnished insight.

It is perhaps the first cultural treatment of New Zealand rugby since Foreskin's Lament, in the 1970s, Smith says.

''Given that rugby is such a pivotal part of our culture we thought it was high time there was a cinematic exploration of that world,'' Pryor adds.

If Foreskin's Lament was indeed the last time rugby was invited into the theatre, then it has to be wondered whether the schism of 1981, when much of urban liberal New Zealand stood with the ANC while rugby-playing New Zealand went to see the Boks, explains the interval.

''I think that's right,'' Pryor says, confessing to being a city boy with little prior exposure to football culture.

But he says the time they spent on the documentary, filming for a year allowed them to feel part of the Reporoa woodwork, part of the community.

''We went in thinking about the rites and rituals of rugby and questioning why it was so deeply important to these men in their lives,'' Smith says.

They came to see the club represented something of a sacred place for the men, she says.

There they could talk about what was important to them, such as backing each other, ''saving your pain for the shed'', noble ideas.

And because most worked alone on their farms, under significant financial pressure, the club was a refuge from that.

There's a spiritual element, Pryor says, where the men get to transcend the daily grind and reach a different stage of being.

And as the film shows, if that is not achieved on the field, then a different stage of being is guaranteed at the ''after-match''.

The film is awash in alcohol.

Smith stands back from judgement: ''We don't go in trying to celebrate or condemn, we are simply exploring a world.''

The drink, like the club, is a valve, she says, that helps take the edge off the pressures in the rest of their lives.

''These guys saw the film and they loved the film and they said `that's us', and they actually talked about that afterwards, in terms of the drinking, and they said `we are in a safe environment', there are women and children around. They felt that if they were going to cut loose, the rugby club, this little club in the middle of nowhere was probably the place to be doing it.

''It is a complex world we are holding up to the light. There are things as a culture we might question, maybe struggle with, but I think there is a lot of stuff in there that we can celebrate.''

 


The film

• The Ground We Won screens as part of the New Zealand International Film Festival Autumn Events at Dunedin's Regent Theatre on Sunday, April 19 at 4pm. The film returns on general release on May 7.

Autumn events also include:

That Sugar Film (Saturday, April 18 at noon and Sunday, April 19 at 11.30am), and a selection of classic films: The Conformist, A Hard Day's Night, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Spartacus, and Pinocchio.

 For more go to www.nziff.co.nz.


 

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