Alex Casey reviews a new local music documentary four years in the making.
One of the many crack-up conversations in Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds happens when the musician visits his mum in Lake Kaniere. They are heading out on a walk in the infamous wild West Coast weather, and Williams has forgotten his raincoat. “Hopeless,” his mum jibes from the driver’s seat. “You haven’t got enough clothes on, no wonder you always get sick.” Williams stays silent. “So,” Mum moves on. “When are you going to Haast to record your waiata album?”
It’s a moment that symbolises so much of what the documentary is about – the reality of someone holding many different identities at once, including being both a petulant teenager getting growled by his mum and an award-winning, globe-trotting musician on the cusp of making his first album entirely in te reo Māori. “Different parts of me, I guess,” Williams reflects when visiting his marae in Tōrere, soon adding “uncle” to that growing list of roles.
The first feature length documentary by director Ursula Grace Williams (STILL HERE, Zealandia), Ngā Ao E Rua follows Marlon Williams (no relation) around the country and the world for a whopping four-year journey. It’s not only the origin story of his new album, Te Whare Tīwekaweka, but a deeply personal story of reconnection with whakapapa and language. “It’s a sensitive project but I’m being open about it and the mistakes I’m making,” he says.
You might expect a portrait of a solo musician undertaking the biggest challenge of his life to plumb the dead serious depths of a tortured lone genius, but both the documentary and its subject seem totally disinterested in any kind of moody myth-making. Instead, Williams appears deeply normal – playing board games and basketball with his buddies, yakking about his gastrointestinal issues and psoriasis, and struggling for an exceptionally long time to use a corkscrew.
We do get hazy sequences of touring and the toll it takes, but the film is largely rooted on home soil. Given the director’s award-winning back catalogue exploring the complexity and beauty of life in regional Aotearoa, it’s no surprise that every location is shot more beautifully than the last. The aquamarine water of Ōhinehou shimmers against the looming jagged hills, the lush forests around the West Coast heave with mist, and the camera basically smirks whenever it cuts from the blue open skies of Aotearoa to the stinky smog of London or LA.
The film is especially moving when it travels up north with Williams and his dad to Tōrere, where little cousins run around at sunset, the whānau stack wood and watch fireworks, and he performs ‘Aua Atu Rā’ on the marae ātea. Williams talks frankly throughout about his own shifting relationship with te reo Māori, and the responsibility he feels to these future generations. Collaborator Kommi Tamati-Elliffe explains that pressure plainly after one writing session: “these waiata, these songs, will be passed on forever.”
Those waiata are weaved through the documentary with ease, wrapping the viewer up in the same beautiful cosy blanket that we’re seeing crafted in front of our eyes. There is a brief sequence that lets a necessary chill in, when Kommi talks about teaching against a backdrop of controversy, and how “being Māori means to be culturally taxed.” Media clips from Don Brash and co highlight this ongoing opposition. “You cannot go to a playcentre in the country now without learning te reo, even without a brown face for miles,” spits Brash. “For me, it is not of value.”
It is a shocking and ugly sentiment that rips through the gentle vibe of the movie like a Gaudi toenail (if you know, you know). But it also serves as a crucial reminder of the wider political context in which this casually revolutionary creative project is taking place. Don’t be fooled by the light touch of the filmmaker, or Williams goofing around with a punching bag: this is a brave, essential and joyous film that couldn’t have arrived at a better time. Much more than another music documentary, it feels like quietly witnessing a piece of history.
Marlon Williams: Ngā Ao E Rua – Two Worlds is in cinemas May 1
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