TIFF25 REVIEW: Mārama [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 89 minutes
Studio: Watermelon Pictures
Director(s): Taratoa Stappard
Writer(s): Taratoa Stappard

Walking backwards into the future.

I’m unsure how you could read the genre description of Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama as a “Māori gothic horror set in Victorian England” and not find yourself racing to be seated. Add an image of Ariana Osborne’s Mary in a giant red dress with gigot sleeves while engaged in an impassioned haka and the potential for the film to truly dig into the historical colonial violence that occurred in what’s now known as New Zealand comes into full focus. Because this woman has most assuredly been grievously harmed by British occupiers. Whether directly or not, generational trauma grabs hold to the bones without ever letting go.

We meet Mary as she’s being unceremoniously thrown out of a horse-drawn carriage by its racist driver and pointed down a steep hillside towards her destination. She’s meant to meet a British man who claims to know about her ancestors—a topic for which she has zero recollection having been adopted and raised by an English family. All that’s inside his sparse home is a bare bed and a mirror on the wall. When Mary’s candlelight hits that glass, though, we see the ghost of a man on its mattress. Is it her imagination? A vision? Perhaps an echo of past horrors soon to be repeated?

Think of it as an “all-the-above” once Mary makes her way to Sir Nathaniel Cole’s (Toby Stephens) palatial Hawkser Manor. Friends with the gentleman she was to meet, he felt it his duty to send for her upon discovering she’d arrived. Cole spent years in New Zealand himself and explains his profound respect for the Māori—even revealing his fluency with the language. His hospitality isn’t merely a courtesy to shield her from the elements of that drafty room, though. No, his hope is for Mary to accept his offer of utilizing her teaching expertise to become his nine-year-old granddaughter Anne’s (Evelyn Towersey) new governess.

He’s not wrong when he says she’ll have a tough time finding a job this good elsewhere in England, but the presumption definitely gives Mary pause. So too do the series of new visions that occur whenever she gazes upon her reflection or touches someone within the estate. The imagery is always brutally horrific. Always someone dying by strangulation or a gunshot if not just screaming into her face. Having never seen New Zealand herself, we’re unsure what these moments are or the identity of victims and perpetrators alike. Is each act a piece of her history? Cole’s and Anne’s Uncle Jack’s (Erroll Shand) history? Their shared history?

The ramifications of it being the latter prove the most potent since this whole situation is too convenient and purposeful for it to be a coincidence. And since Stappard’s desire to craft a film with these connections to the past was partly to reckon with his own Māori ancestry, we know the forthcoming discoveries will be difficult to absorb. This is why he begins everything by putting his cards on the table as far as Mārama‘s content is concerned. He will pull no punches to expose the “violation and desecration of Māori culture” in Aotearoa because the only way to move forward is to understand the inherent trauma you carry.

At just under ninety-minutes, Stappard and Mary waste little time investigating her fainting spells, legacy as a “seer,” and Cole’s true purpose for wanting her to stay. She instantly recognizes his admiration for the Māori as a remnant of his need for conquest and ownership. He wields this interest as a manipulation rather than compassion because he’s too comfortable in his position of power over her to truly believe she could ever pose a threat. Even when his Captain James Cook-themed birthday celebration of brown-faced inebriation is interrupted by Mary’s haka’s intense display of spiritual intimidation, Cole believes he’s in control.

Theirs are two unforgettable performances as a result. Desperation versus hubris. Identity versus appropriation. Stephens is as charismatic as ever, toeing the violent line he knows exists between them so as not to scare her off immediately yet never worried when she proves he’s crossed it anyway. And Osborne is a tour de force of emotional upheaval as her very presence in the lion’s den reveals every nightmarish detail about who she is and who her ancestors now need her to be. Their third act is a bloody and bold bid at reclamation. More than one woman’s vengeance, Mary is a symbol of familial, cultural, and indigenous retribution.