Mr Pip

Saturday night in Wellie - at the movies. After all, the Lighthouse Cinema in Wigan off Taranaki St would have to be one of the best around. It has very comfy two-seatercouches for all clients, only about seventy seats in all, really like a large living room, very large. It is gently tiered and everyone has an excellent view of the screen and there are no advertisements before the movie, but they do tease the early arrivers with a quick movie-trivia quiz on the screen to test the die-hards.  One really feels part of the family at theLighthouse. Of course many bring in their wine glass, or choc-tops,  which they have ample space for on the side armrests to each 'couch'. Going alone of course I had to share with a stranger, but a cushion is thoughtfully provided to make the necesary polite space between the two. It is a well behaved audience and the usher makes a speech before each screening. Tonight, it is a sell-out, he says, Mr Pip being a Kiwi productuon and just recently released,not yet in Australia. People eagerly await the opening credits but there are the trailers to see while the inevitable late comers arrive.

It is indeed an excellent production, lusciously shot in exotic Papua New Guinea, and theLondon scene  replicated by a very English Christchurch lookalike.  It is the story of a New Zealand school teacher, although  in the movie represented by an Englishman, who takes his Papuan wife, depressed after the loss of her new born baby, back to her native Bougainville, where he is the only white man, and he is invited to take the post of school teacher, as the the copper mining conglomerate has taken over the island and it is under a military regime. 

This benign middled-aged Englishman brings to his appreciative class of young, and old, a reading of Charles Dicken's Great Expectations, and the major character, the orphan Pip, becomes the centrepiece of the story. It is a beautifully rendered tragedy, written through the eyes of a young Papuan girl, who transposes herself into the Dickensian era, and who finally, after visiting Dickens' home in England, returns to teach in the war ravaged Bougainville. It is an award winning story, and may well become an award winning movie, with the exotic and unknown PNG being the background to this timeless coming of age story. Five stars.

However you will see from these photos of the wind swept Cook Strait outside my home, that I am, in effect, in my bed-study, witnessing yet another 100km an hour gale force wind in Wellington Harbour. It is aleady October and the wintry conditions have not yet abated - it is perfect weather to stay home and write this blog, as venturing out, which I must do later, is something which I must prepare for. Like Pip in Great Expectations, Kiwis are adventurous and intrepid, and are prepared to brave any situation which may occur. Think the first climbing of MtEverest, by a Kiwi naturally. Who else would have had the fortitude to scale those amazing heights. I feel very small in New Zealand, as the Elements here are very great.