This year’s opening New Zealand International Film Festival offering was a couple of nights ago, and I still feel this incredible NZ movie reverberating inside me.
The Dark Horse is heartbreaking, heartwarming and terribly raw. Director James Napier Robertson has crafted a movie so genuine in its authenticity it sets a new cultural threshold. The performances are all excellent, but Cliff Curtis as Genesis Potini a gifted chess player from a violent childhood who battles mental illness to teach a small class of troubled youth how to play chess is one of his greatest acting achievements.
Curtis and Robertson have the patience and subtle grace to allow the camera to linger on Potini in a way that is painfully intimate. The dramatic conclusion to a lifetime of violence and the sacrifice of manhood didn’t leave a dry eye on opening night. The final scene won’t depart you easily.
The Dark Horse is this generation’s ‘Once Were Warriors’ minus the overblown symbolism. It is such an extraordinarily brilliant movie that manages to highlight the challenges of mental illness, homelessness, hope, poverty, the emotional fragility of men, domestic violence and the true impact of toxic masculinity in NZ in a way few others ever have.
Beautiful. Just beautiful.
6 Stars
Thanks Martyn. How can we get to see this?
Movie opens to public 31 July in cinemas all over NZ.
One of the most moving, eye opening and heart warming films I have ever seen. This is a must for your watch list. Not an overly emotional person, but I was balling my eyes out from about 10mins in! Truely inspirational
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