Film Review- BOY written and directed by Taika Waititi

By: Christine McFarlane

Reconciliation can happen at any stage in life, and the circumstances in which it happens varies with every individual, young or old.  The movie “BOY,” that was written and directed by Taika Waititi, and premiered at the opening night of the imagineNATIVE festival is about a young boy who embarks on a journey to knowing and understanding the adult world in which he will soon be a part of. As a part of this journey, he also must come to terms with who is father really is, and watching Boy reconcile with that is both humorous and heartbreaking at the same time.

The movie ‘BOY’ is set in a rural Maori community in the Bay of Plenty, a rural community on the East Coast of New Zealand. Boy, the main character invents memories and tales about his father to compensate for the little that he does remember about his father. It is upon his father’s return that he learns to confront his fanciful dreams and confront the man he thought he remembered.

The three main characters in the film are all trying to reconcile with something in their lives. While Boy tries to reconcile with the fact that his father is not the hero he made him out to be, the younger brother Rocky struggles to reconcile with knowledge that his mother died while giving birth to him, and the father Alamein has to learn to come to terms with the fact that life is no longer a game, that he cannot be the hero his son looks to him as and that his two sons need a father who is reliable and someone they can look to for guidance.

As I have come to understand- reconciliation often involves two processes. These processes include the societal and the personal. It is the personal process of reconciliation that we see each individual character grapple with, especially “Boy”.  Boy is a dreamer and he spends his days telling tales about his father’s exploits as a war hero, a jail breaker and his nights telling his pet goat Leaf about his own exploits, getting a hickey from the girl of his dreams, Chardonnay, and putting up with local bullies, his mean Aunt and his frustrating younger brother. 

When Alamein appears again in his life, Boy grapples not only with his dreams, but also with his anger, his sorrow and disappointment because his father is nothing at all what he expected, and in fact his father is like an overgrown child himself. The audience sees a role reversal take place because Boy will do anything to please his father, and he takes on new problems as his father enlists his help in finding money taken from a robbery.  These issues include seeing Boy having to grow up really fast because he witnesses his father abusing alcohol and marijuana and is privy to his father’s rages and getting beaten up. Boy also has to juggle many roles. Roles that include being a caretaker for his younger brother, and tribe of deserted cousins, and being strong while also grappling with his own anger and insecurities.

It is interesting to witness how reconciliation can be such a varied process and how it unfolds within the movie BOY.  What is also interesting is how the director of the film addresses these very powerful issues with a sense of humor. A sense of humor helps to distract the viewer when things get really intense between Boy and his father. Watching this film also reminded me of one of my very first readings for my Politics and Process of Reconciliation course  about Kanikonriio: ‘Power of a Good Mind,” written by Jake Swamp, where it is stated that “we need to have a good understanding of where we’re at and where we came from in order to formulate a new future,” (18) and  “to work for peace, people have to overcome their own prejudices, their own anger, and recognize that we are individual human beings, and that deep inside of us there’s a thing called love and understanding. And so we have to learn to tap into that again.”(20)

Boy taps into this very process of looking deep within and learns that in order for him to reconcile and move forward with his father, he has to let go of the fanciful dreams and putting his father on a pedestal, and see that his father is an individual human being who grapples with his own issues. It is through love and understanding that Boy must realize that “finding the treasure to start a new life” will mean coming to terms with the history of his family, why they are the way they are and recognizing that it is okay to dream but you also have to be realistic and accept other people’s processes too.
BOY is written and directed by Taika Waititi, produced by Ainsley Gardiner, Cliff Curtis, Emmanuel Michael and co-produced by Merata Mita. Associate Producer is Richard Fletcher and the Production Company is Whenua Films, Unison Films. Running time is approximately 90 minutes and stars actors James Rolleston, Te Aho Eketone-Whitu and Taika Waititi.

(This film premiered at the opening night of the imagineNATIVE film festival, October 20, 2010)

Works Cited:

Lynne Davis. Alliances: Re/Envisioning Indigenous-non-Indigenous Relationships. Pg. 18-20. University of Toronto Press. 2010