Usually, when a film comes out of Aotearoa about kids, it’s not for kids. Taika Waititi’s Boy got into drugs and dirty language, Niki Caro’s Whale Rider brought the kind of drama targeted at adults, and Daniel Borgman’s The Weight of Elephants was just straight-up depressing.
Over the past couple of decades we’ve also had an abundance of family friendly Kiwi films you’d struggle to count them all on one hand. Even if you include Footrot Flats (which might be generous but I won’t judge), you’ll still have fingers free.
Which is why The Mountain feels so impossibly precious. Rachel House, in her feature directorial debut, has made an authentically New Zealand film about kids that speaks to young audiences while telling a story with enough weight to resonate with anyone at any age.
Working from a script by Tom Furniss and then co-written by House herself, the story follows young Sam (Elizabeth Atkinson) as she tries to connect with Taranaki Maunga she wants to ask the mighty mountain to cure her cancer. Before she can even get onto grass she runs into Mallory (Reuben Francis), who is still grieving his late mum; right after he decides to tag along, so does Bronco (Terrence Daniel), another new kid who feels neglected by his father but has a strong connection with his Māori culture which is what Sam yearns for.
So far so grief-stricken, but House’s tender treatment of the themes and her three leads keep things from getting too dark and stormy. Friendship and fun are what drive this movie: Atkinson, Francis and Daniel breathe life into their characters’ young camaraderie with some excellent child acting backed up by a script that wisely doesn’t demand too much heavy lifting from them dramatically.
Bronco will likely become everyone’s favourite, he’s a kid full of self-belief and independence who’s environmentally conscious enough to understand the impact of plastic waste but not worldly enough to think that maybe taking his BMX on a bush walk is a bad idea. Mallory is the quiet one, desperate for friends but more adept at making sensible decisions like packing properly for a hike. And there’s Sam, a girl so single-minded in her mission that it’s both adorable and hilarious when she goes overboard trying to look hard (such as asking another child for a gun).
And then there’s the biggest star of them all: Taranaki, who gets top billing in the cast. More than simply acknowledging the mountain’s legal status as a living entity, this is one of many threads of Māori thinking that runs through The Mountain. Then there’s the visual value of having such an imposing ancestor leading a film; DOP Matt Henley ensures we get loads of banger shots that do justice to Taranaki’s magnificence, which makes The Mountain feel well deserving of its cinematic release.
If anything holds this adventure back, it is itself. The Mountain relies on the likeability of these three protagonists and their shared goal without fully embracing the potential of a kids-on-the-loose story. Such films were abundant in the ‘80s and ‘90s – from ET to Home Alone, The Goonies to BMX Bandits where unsupervised children go on the journey of a lifetime. Those movies had real danger, deadly boobytraps, gun-wielding thieves, that kind of thing, which made for stakes and thrills along the way. There are plenty of risks involved when going bush in Aotearoa, as Waititi showed us with Hunt for the Wilderpeople; but The Mountain only ever dips its toes into this perilousness, never taking things further.
It’s an odd oversight for a film that otherwise does not condescend to children indeed, it valiantly refuses to do so. There are some keen observations about hospital life mined for laughs by Sukena Shah’s Sam-ward-friend Peachy (delivered with superb monotone), often paired with Fern Sutherland’s reliably worried Sam-mum; Byron Coll quietly admirably plays Mallory’s distant dad who is (poorly) trying to hide his grief from his son; Troy Kingi walks aloof/affectionate line as Bronco’s dad (he also supplies the film’s music man, taking this funk-fuelled soundtrack all the way to Zygertron).
These father son problems could have been worked through more thoroughly, though the ending does focus rightly on Sam. A lesser family film would cave to convention here probably end with magical mountain growing face, granting each character one wish before Smashmouth closes out a musical number but The Mountain stays true and goes deeper into what Sam really wants: borne out thoughtfully via her new friendships and Taranaki’s properly powerful presence as opposed to some wishy-washy climax that solves everything.
Still, lovely and lightly thought-provoking as it is, The Mountain falls short of its self-imposed limitations with an ending that in attempting to provide a neat resolution for everyone ends up feeling like a loose thread. But it’s these loose threads that make the film worth remembering.
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