Mike Jonathan can probably blame his parents for him becoming the guy to direct a movie about the 1864 Battle of Ōrākau. He’s not the first man to do it. Pioneering film-maker Rudall Hayward did two versions of Rewi’s Last Stand – a silent film in 1925 and a talkie on the eve of the centennial of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1939.
Yes, Jonathan has seen the Hayward films, which were named for the defiant and ultimately defeated rangatira Rewi Maniapoto. Talking to Jonathan (Waikato, Te Arawa, Mātaatua), it’s clear he’s steeped in Aotearoa screen history, something he’s added to in his three decades as a cinematographer and documentary director.
The parental influence? Well, every time his family would drive north from Taumaranui to visit their marae near Hamilton, his father would point to the Rewi Maniapoto memorial at Kihikihi and say, “that’s your koro”, and tell him he had great-great-great grandparents at Ōrākau pā. “All my dad said was, ‘They were there.’ He didn’t know much about them, but they were there.”
When he was nine, despite being a little too young, his mother took him to Utu. Director Geoff Murphy’s landmark film about 19th century colonial conflict centred on warrior Te Wheke, who swings from collaboration with imperial forces to fighting against them. There are parallels with the path of a leading character in Jonathan’s Ōrākau feature Ka Whawhai Tonu: Struggle Without End. “I remember crying and my mother sitting next to me going, ‘What are you crying about?’ I’m crying because I see people who are the same complexion as me dying.”
Utu, he says, left its mark and put him on a course towards a career in film – one which involved him having film and documentary maker Merata Mita, who was married to Murphy and acted in Utu, as a mentor in the years before her death in 2010. Along the way, he went from being the token brown face at a Rotorua video production house, able to film and edit stories for Māori news show Te Karere, to going out on his own.
Finally getting to make a feature – one that is 95% in te reo with English subtitles – isn’t so much a big leap, he says, as a progression from all the work he’s done so far.
He also sees it as an extension of the legacy of those who have gone before him, such as Mita and actor and film-maker Don Selwyn. His movie about his 19th century tupuna is also a product of his 20th century Māori film-making forebears.
THE BATTLE
Stars in the firing line
Ka Whawhai Tonu depicts the Battle of Ōrākau, the best-known conflict of the New Zealand Wars, in which iwi aligned to the Kīngitanga movement, and led by Rewi Maniapoto, faced a reckoning with the imperial forces ordered into the Waikato by Governor George Grey.
The film puts the audience into the trenches of the Ōrākau pā as colonial forces lay siege to the quickly built redoubt, pummelling it with artillery and sending wave after wave of imperial troops to attempt to storm its palisades.
Then two days later, came the breakout from the pā, which breached the supposedly overwhelming British lines, allowing Maniapoto and many others to escape. As colonial newspaper the Southern Cross proclaimed at the time, the breakout “snatched a crowning victory from our hands and turned it into a humiliating defeat”.
The breakout certainly makes for an impressive cinematic moment in Ka Whawhai Tonu.
“I recall some of the reports from the soldiers, who just said ... it was like a moment stopped in time,” says Jonathan. “They could not believe what they were seeing. So I just needed an element of that. But it was more from the Māori side. What would it be like stuck in the middle of it?”
Before that, the film captures the siege and the acts of defiance against seemingly hopeless odds by the likes of Temuera Morrison as Maniapoto and Cliff Curtis in a minor part as a priest named Wi Toka. It’s the first time the two actors, who starred in Once Were Warriors, have been in a film together since Vincent Ward’s 2005 colonial era movie River Queen.
Having read the screenplay by Tim Worrall (Head High), Curtis told producers, who included his cousin Piripi Curtis, this small part would suit him best.
“Once he’d read the script, that’s the role he wanted,” says Jonathan. “He said, ‘I’ll be the priest, kill me off.”
He may not have been on set for long, but he drew a crowd when he did. “When Cliff did his scene during the battle … everyone was watching. All the cast and crew went up on the hill and were watching Cliff go through his process. He was drilling me. He was asking ‘What am I seeing now? How many people am I seeing?’ I said, ‘You are seeing 2000 imperial soldiers breaching the palisades. He said, ‘No, no, no. What am I actually seeing?’ And I said, ‘Well, actually, you’re seeing three soldiers come through the palisades. He said, ‘Okay, cool – I’m gonna go with the first one.”
Directing Morrison required a different approach. Jonathan said the actor initially struggled with playing Maniapoto, who might have been the military commander of the Māori forces at Ōrākau, but beforehand had argued with other tribal leaders against making a stand against the British there.
The early scene about that debate is where Morrison found Maniapoto’s voice.
“He didn’t really get the words of it, really, until we did one rehearsal on set, and then he went, ‘I’m starting to get this now.’ I said, ‘Come on, do it one more time’ … then he pulled off this amazing performance I’ve never seen before with him, and with emotion and conviction. I actually believed he was Rewi … it was a powerful moment to witness.”
THE RANGITAHI
A Romeo & Juliet story
Much of the film is told through the eyes of its youngest characters. That allowed, says Mike Jonathan, for a fictional story set against the history of the Battle of Ōrākau, one that would appeal to a wider audience and give an element of hope to the story of the defeat.
It also allowed him to sidestep some inter-iwi rivalry about the relative importance of respective ancestors.
“We needed a vehicle that could guide us through history and so the fictional story of the kids was the best vehicle to do that. We got a lot of kickback from multiple iwi – they said, ‘You know, our ancestor was the best and he did this and he did that, and don’t listen to those guys down the road.’
“And then you go to the guys down the road, they’d say exactly the same thing.”
“So, my thinking was, ‘Let’s not focus on those tūpuna but let’s focus on these kids’ because I just know my style of storytelling.
“I can tell stories from a kid’s perspective and tell them in a way where there are these historical events happening in their peripheral.”
There’s a Romeo and Juliet story of sorts between Haki (Paku Fernandez), a captive half-caste scout in the colonial army, and Kōpū (Hinerangi Harawira-Nicholas) who acts as a medium to the god of war.
There’s a reference to the Shakespeare play from Turama, played by Miriama Smith and based on Hineatūrama (Ngāti Whakaue), a forbear of the prominent Tapsell whānau.
“Our kids, who are the main kids, were kickass,” says Jonathan. “Every time we said ‘karawhiua’, which means ‘action’, they just turned into their ancestors.”
THE TUPUNA
The Whakapapa factor
Among the biggest challenges facing the makers of Ka Whawhai Tonu was ensuring the descendants of those involved could have a say in their depiction.
“To have their blessing, to be able to tell the story, that was a big thing,” says Jonathan. “So every step of the way, we needed to let the iwi, hapū and families know where we’re at, which meant sending out revised scripts throughout the development asking for feedback.”
When it came to casting, whakapapa had some bearing. Temuera Morrison (Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Rarua) has ancestral connections to his character. So, too, does Te Wakaunua Te Kurapa who plays Tūhoe chief Te Whenuanui, a figure he also played at an older age in the 2022 indigenous portmanteau film We Are Still Here. “He is the only one who could play his ancestor.” The film-makers also consulted respective iwi about depictions of moko. Descendants of Maniapoto requested the design worn by Morrison be a little different.
Jonathan laughs when it’s pointed out the only major Pākehā character, an officer played by British actor Jason Flemyng, seems to have his own ancestry. He has something of an uncanny resemblance – the mutton chops help – to Corin Redgrave, who was imported to play George Grey in the landmark 1970s television series The Governor. “Yeah, that’s funny. He does, actually.”
Ka Whawhai Tonu: Struggle Without End is at cinemas nationwide from Thursday, June 27.
To read more about Ka Whawhai Tonu designer Shayne Radford, go here.