Warming the cockles of audience hearts at last year's Sydney Film Festival, Hamish Bennett's Bellbird is a defiantly optimistic tribute to the Northland region where the primary school teacher-cum-filmmaker grew up.
A New Zealander of Māori descent (Ngāti Whakaue, Patuharakeke, Kati Waewae), Bennett shot his debut feature on a working dairy farm in the rural town of Maungakaramea, and enlisted locals and family members alongside professional actors.
An expansion of his award-winning short about a devoted older couple, Ross and Beth (2014), Bellbird's winsome story of grief and growth rolls unerringly along well-worn grooves, with enough 'offbeat' jokes to keep matters light — keep an eye out for 'Cow Poo Girl' and 'Cow Poo Boy' listed evocatively in the credits.
Ross (Marshall Napier, McLeod's Daughters) is an emotionally distant, flannel-wearing grump who could rival Babe's Farmer Hoggett for reticence; his wife Beth (Annie Whittle) is a chirpy community figure.
While Ross grumbles indoors, she hosts the local choir for sherry on the front porch, where they let loose a ukulele-led rendition of You Are My Sunshine that sets the leisurely tempo the film sustains.
After her sudden death — an event that passes wordlessly in an early scene — Ross is left dumbstruck, wearing a haunted expression that Mary Poppins would say belongs only on a codfish.
He continues to move hazily through the motions, rising pre-dawn to squelch staunchly through the mud to milk his cows, just as his father did, and his grandfather before him. But with little more than sudokus and Radio New Zealand for company, he needs extra hands to keep the farm operational.
His kindly but timid son Bruce (Cohen Holloway, Top of the Lake) reluctantly moves back home.
"You two must have some scintillating conversations," teases his boss Connie — played by Taika Waititi favourite Rachel House, flaunting her pitchfork-sharp wit.
Bruce isn't exactly the prodigal son. Thinking he'd escaped the regular Exorcist-like encounters with animal blood and gunk that leave him queasy on the farm, Bruce has a job he much prefers at the garbage dump — with a sideline in sifting through trash for treasures to hawk on eBay. Rather than a punchline, Bennett treats the gig with respect (as he did in his 2012 debut short, The Dump).
Shooting unpretentiously, and often from the ground in the muck, cinematographer Grant McKinnon captures the modest farmhouse and damp rolling hills evocatively, lingering on sagging fences and dainty wildflowers that grow by the side of the gravel road, to a hand-knitted tea cosy that adorns the kitchen table.
The film's rose-tinted affection extends to all its creatures.
Especially the dairy cows.
Even if casting them wasn't as laborious as the hunt to find the star of Kelly Reichardt's First Cow, the local herd exude a quietly magnetic presence. They are lovingly observed across one calving season, bringing us hushed, documentary-like scenes of a mother delivering and licking her goop-covered newborn calf, as life refuses to wait for one man's tunnel-vision sadness to lift.
Drawing clear parallels with the tongue-tied men, the veterinarian Clem (Stephen Tamarapa) rhapsodises, "There's a hidden side to cows that a lot of people just don't appreciate. I mean, they have this stoic, placid exterior which suggests not a lot's going on, but emotionally they're actually incredibly deep."
The film's most powerful image might just be a reaction shot of concerned cows huddled in silent vigil when one of their kind is in danger.
Through its appreciation of understatement, the film accepts that there are ways to communicate beyond grand speeches or overt cornball displays.
Still, when Ross's motor-mouth neighbour Marley (11-year-old newcomer Kahukura Retimana, another local) arrives to lend a hand with the farmwork — a classic bored kid just looking for something to do — he jumpstarts Bellbird, allowing the film to riff on the 'old codger meets young upstart' trope trotted out in Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), and Connie increasingly steps in to articulate the words that the grieving men can't.
In a scene painfully amusing to watch, she telephones Ross to deliver a message on behalf of Bruce — who is seated next to him — as father and son fumble forward in their attempt to reconnect.
In its own gentle way the film touches on peripheral questions of the crisis in men's mental health, and the limited entertainment or economic prospects for rural communities, with Marley's mum returning a five-dollar note to Ross, only half-truthfully telling him, "We live in the wops, got nothing to spend it on."
Rather than key messaging, Bennett's eye is drawn to good and decent ordinary folk who are bravely facing the day.
His characters may slot a little too neatly into familiar roles, but they're observed with a rare level of compassion which lifts everything it touches, as in a Tony Birch short story.
For those tired of city-slicker nihilism or in need of a feel-good hit, this is a bittersweet pastoral song to cut through the winter gloom, and a timely affirmation of the importance of community.
Bellbird is in cinemas now.
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2020-07-02 19:35:46Z
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