Tinā

dir: Miki Magasiva

2024

This is one of the biggest flicks in Aotearoa’s box office history, and yet did anyone else outside of those holy isles hear about it?

I’m not going to pretend (too much) that I know that much about films from NZ in a scholarly sense, but I can make broad statements based on snippets I’ve seen online and the kinds of flicks I see available on streaming services and SBS online: there is a confidence, and there is money enough, that sustains a tv and film industry that is very different compared to so-called Australia, despite our proximity to each other. There are entire Kiwi films in te reo Maori (Maori language) set during the Treaty Wars, different uprisings, and I’m not even talking about movies starring Temuera Morrison or that other famous Kiwi actor Guy Pearce.

And I’m not even talking about that one-man industry Taika Waititi, who’s now all Hollywood and such.

There are Kiwi flicks where the main characters aren’t even white / Pākehā (*gasp*). But it’s also vibrant enough as an industry that there’s no uniformity to it, stories cover all sorts of topics from the mythical to the historical (as well as the legacy of colonisation and disenfranchisement of indigenous people from their lands and culture etc etc), and there’s room enough for a flick like Tinā.

It’s not the main character’s name, it’s a Samoan term meaning ‘mother’, though no-one uses it in the context of calling their actual mums ‘mum’. The main character, who is a Samoan New Zealander, played by a Samoan New Zealander, rejects the term when people use it.

It’s based on a true story, and it’s all been wedged into a fairly familiar format which I very much doubt proceeded in the ways this flick does, but then I rarely believe anything is verbatim in movies, since they’re movies. And it seems, on the surface, and in the trailer, like a fun, uplifting, crowd-pleasing film.

It’s anything but. Honestly, it’s a pretty grim story, and the fact that it’s based on a true story makes it seem even more depressing.

Yet, all that being said, I’m a sucker for sad stories.

It’s set (ominously) about 14 years ago. Mareta (Anapela Polataivao), works at a primary school as a music teacher, and is really into singing, choirs and the like, and she has a beloved daughter, nervously calling her mum just before she auditions at the CTV Building in Christchurch, looking for reassurance that she’s going to sing okay.

Christchurch… in 2011…

Before that fateful day Mareta was super into a bunch of things: She was super into church / her Catholic faith, super into religious / choir singing, and super into her community.

When she loses her daughter to the awful earthquakes that killed so many people in Christchurch, she loses her faith as well, rightly blaming a malevolent god who doesn’t look out for anyone, botherers and non-god-botherers alike.

Gone is her connection to God, to faith, to community, to anything. She sleeps all day and lives in filth. A boy she looked after who was neglected for whatever reasons back in the day has grown up to be a decent man, and naturally he tricks her into getting a job because Social Security are cutting her dole check because she’s not going through the charade of ‘looking’ for work.

Sio (Beulah Koale), somehow gets her into a very stodgy, very colonial Catholic school called St Francis of Assisi, at first just as a unglorified babysitter. There are no Maori students, let alone Samoan / Polynesian students either. To say it’s predominately Pākehā makes it sound inherently racist, but to be fair (not that anything to do with the Catholics deserves even a molecule of fairness), there probably aren’t a lot of practicing Catholics in those communities compared to the others.

There is of course a (small) number of students from Chinese and Indian backgrounds, which indicates all is right in the world. One of the retiring senior admin people (Dalip Sondhi) sees in Mareta an opportunity for the kids whose welfare he’s meant to care about, seeing that there’s something (deliberately left vague) she can offer them that no-one at the school will be able to.

Shame that the new principal and every other teacher might as well be in the Klan.

Now, I am not going to pretend that I know everything about racism. I do know a little about it, or at least about group dynamics, about hierarchies, about prejudices and how individuals and groups inflict themselves upon others and why. One of the most basic things I’ve learned over the years is that deeply racist fuckheads aren’t necessarily deeply racist all the fucking time, especially in public.

For the purposes of this story, Mareta is barely tolerated from the start and people say deeply dumbly racist stuff to her face at almost any and every opportunity. They never get to say anything functional like “it’s quarter to ten” or “how was lunch?” It’s always “you are sub-human and your ways and culture are despicable to us, the dominant and very white culture in power for now and hopefully ever more.”

I mean come on, that’s beyond simplistic. Even the worst people hide it most of the time. They just wait until they’re really drunk or when they’re typing an ill-advised email to all staff in their faculty decrying wokeness or the kids of today and their piercings and tattoos and lack of contempt for other cultures. You hide it under a concern for traditional ways or talk about the benefits of civilisation while ignoring the slave trade or opium wars etc. that made the empire so great.

If you’re middle class and above, that is, like I assume teachers and principals would be at a Catholic high school. You choose your moments, bide your time; you don’t give it away for free.

The thing is, though, Mareta doesn’t care. She does not give a single fuck. Ninety per cent of the open racism expressed towards her is water off a duck’s back: She can barely stand being alive without her daughter, so the bullshit she puts up with now versus probably most of her life seems like no fucks are given regardless.

And yet, and yet… In one girl she seems to see the embodiment of her daughter, the echo or the reminder of her, a level of life, ability, creativity, inspiration, and virtually against her will she goes to extraordinary lengths in order to help this deeply traumatised, deeply conflicted girl out.

Why? Well, because it’s narratively convenient. It’s how you tell a story on a screen so that audiences care about it. I’m not saying it’s not contrived, I’m just saying, well, it gets us where we need to go.

There isn’t enough room/time for most of the kids to differentiate themselves, sadly, but they’re here because of Mareta, and not the other way around. Other than Sophie (Antonia Campbell), and maybe the star rugby player Anthony (Zac O’Meager), the kids are mostly snooty kids who for their own reasons gravitate towards Mareta and her strict teaching techniques with regards to choir.

It becomes their world, their everything, and they pour themselves into it like Mareta does too. It’s not even clear why any of them are there, and there’s a very unlikely cover story which has Mareta spontaneously ‘creating’ the choir from nothing in order to help out the deeply distressed Sophie, who despite her musical talent doesn’t seem like she’ll be able to achieve her dream of getting a musical scholarship, unless…

Again, yes, it’s contrived, but. Some in the audience might wonder, as does one of Mareta’s friends, why she would apply herself, sacrifice herself, if you will, for these privileged kids, when the kids in the poorer areas need her skills and her passion too, and what can you say to that? These kids need to be inspired too. They are no less worthy of inspiration, of learning something valuable, which is how to work with other people, and lift the people up around you.

Teamwork, the word, has been so overused and abused for so long that all of us past a certain age die a little inside each time we hear it, because it’s usually a word yelled at us by someone who isn’t even part of the team. There is something about a choir doing it, in song, in ways where the interweaving of melody and counterpoint, of different soundscapes, creates something sublime. And of course there are beautiful scenes when the choir work together, with Mareta’s help, and create something magical (at least on the soundtrack) that would move stone to tears.

And that this is achieved occasionally through religious songs, I mean, I have no complaints, even as a filthy faithless unbeliever; if anything my soul soared higher than the average godbotherer, since I thanked the creators (humans) involved for approaching the sublime, and not some judgey invisible sky jerk.

Will the choir get to the Big Sing, and sing their hearts out for Mareta, or will the forces of casual racism and mocking indifference win out once again?

The culmination of the story, being that last performance at the competition (yes I know what a cliché it is, don’t care, go bother someone else) was so beautiful, so effective I think it broke my heart and reknit it back together about a dozen times over the course of the song, paying tribute to Mareta, her people, and her culture. Perfect ending. Good on those kids. I have no idea if it ever happened, but it was such a transcendent scene.

Obviously Anapela Polataivao carries this flick on her mighty shoulders, going from distraught to disciplined within seconds, never letting go of the pain that makes her not want to live, but never letting that stop her from reaching out to others and caring about kids in pain. Antonia Campbell as Sophie, who has her own trauma to do with that fateful day back in 2011, gives an incredible, commanding performance. I loved this flick, but I’m also aware I’ve made it sound like a joyful celebration of love and life and it’s anything but. Real life is bleak as fuck and there are substantial elements of the story as depicted that I’ve left out, which maybe seems deceptive on my part.

Whatever. I really enjoyed Tinā. Other people might too.

8 times treacle mixed with bitterness and some love sometimes leaves behind something sweet out of 10
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“Focus on the breaths around you. The space between connects us to each other.” – something something bit of social distancing, please - Tinā

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3520120857/?playlistId=tt29120447