Cuba Lighthouse

OI am feeling a little jaded, so a good movie appears to be what I need. Not the Little Princesses movie after all, but what is touted to be a Kiwi classic, called 'The Ground We Won'. Need I say it is not about war, but something even more serious, and even sacred, the Kiwi rural game of Rugby. It is a documentary, filmed in black and white, about a small village rugby club, with its drinking rituals and tribal initiations, its families and its farming, but overall the incredible importance of this weekly competitive game in the psyche and hearts of all the country-living Kiwis.

It was indeed wonderfully photographed. One can only wonder how exquisite it would have appeared in colour. But this bleak result of 'film noir' lends to the subject something even more gritty and realistic. The audience reaction was 'in the know', whereas I felt like an alien from another country, which, I suppose I am. It was also a lesson in basic cattle farming, showing vividly several deliveries of calves, in  some cases inert and useless. 

Its simple storyline was around a chubby young single Dad, and his twin, I think, six year old boys, keen rugby players of course. Dad was their coach and full time carer in a probably once-pristine hill-top home, reduced now to a bachelor's pad needing a good deal of housework. However there was a surfeit of love and it was a suitable positive centrepoint about which to weave the themes of brotherhood, bonding, and the challenges of manhood, albeit awash in a culture of  alcohol binge drinking.

It was an accurate snapshot of Kiwi rural life if the packed and rapt audience's attention was anything to go by. Entertaining as well, as the smart cameraman seemed to have shot unnoticed, gaining precious insights and truths which could otherwise have remained unseen. After seeing this film one can easily understand where the typical Aussie jokes come from about Kiwi farmers in their galoshes. The stereotype was never so well defined and one wonders where the future of rural New Zealand is going when the family farm these days is not often willingly inherited by the kids.