For some directors you abandon judgement. Maybe it’s a movie that seduced you, maybe it’s an interview they gave once, maybe it’s just down to contrariness on your part, but you fall in love and –as a critic – you’re cooked. It’s like that with Vincent Ward, for me. Ever since I heard him describe the “wooden planet” where he intended to set Alien 3, he had me. Ward has that auteur’s combination of bloody-minded guilelessness and eyes fixed on a far horizon. His “wooden planet” offers a perfect metaphor for his approach; it’s almost impossible to visualise (let alone understand) and yet… a wooden planet…. Even as you dismiss the idea, it sticks. Ward’s new movie, River Queen, is a disaster on many fronts, but I’d defend it, and him, to my last breath.
The setting is New Zealand in the mid-19th century. Britain is busy expanding it’s Empire and the Maori tribes of New Zealand are busy trying to resist. Caught up in the midst of this struggle are Samantha Morton (playing Irish), Kiefer Sutherland (playing Oirish) and Cliff Curtis (playing Maori). Morton has a son from a love affair with a Maori tribesman. She calls her son Boy because this is a Vincent Ward movie. At age five, Boy is kidnapped by his paternal grandfather. Morton searches for him for many years, almost surrendering to his loss. But on the eve of a great battle between the Maoris and the British, Cliff Curtis asks Morton to come “up river” – into the Maori heartlands. Only there – he tells her – will she and Boy be reunited.
There are troubled productions and there are Troubled productions and then there’s River Queen. Whoo boy. Short of bubonic plague breaking out on set, everything possible went wrong with this production. It’s star, Samantha Morton, fell sick. It’s director was fired. It’s budget was squandered. It was all Vincent Ward’s fault, of course. I’m not so starry-eyed that I don’t see the man has failings. Tales from the set have him wandering off into the forest, shooting days’ worth of leaves – leaving his stars unattended. He had spent the better part of his production budget after two weeks – so it goes – with nothing to show for it but lovingly-photographed foliage. And so he was replaced by his cinematographer and the movie became, in Morton’s words, “a film without a director”.
How can this turn out well? Well, it didn’t – to be blunt. River Queen has such an excess of voice-over that it’s a wonder when a scene doesn’t need explanation. The movie has a patchwork quality (as you might expect) and performances vary from very good (Morton) to hide-behind-a-beard bad (Sutherland). The story doesn’t make much sense and Samantha Morton’s motivation is sound as kitty litter – and yet… River Queen is worth watching. It’s worth it because of those few bits of Vincent Ward that are still in it: a shot of Morton lying in a Maori canoe at night, her face like a candle; or the scene where Kiefer Sutherland has died and a yellow bird perched on his chest becomes (for us) his soul.
I met Samantha Morton at the Edinburgh Film Festival last year, and I asked her about this movie. She didn’t know if it would be released. Morton, in person, is prickly but lovable. She destroyed her interviewer in Edinburgh, so if you meet her, my advice is: don’t say she plays “difficult women”. River Queen could have been something big for Morton, so it’s a pity it didn’t get a theatrical release. Her character allows her to show a maternal side that’s natural to her and her face, as ever, is beautiful because it can’t conceal. She has no co-star, really. Cliff Curtis chops his finger off, and we still don’t know who he is. Kiefer Sutherland puts on an Irish accent that’s so abominable you wonder if it’s for a bet. But Morton is incapable of poor acting. Plus she looks great in a tunic.
There are those who want movies to be good and those who don’t care about good, only that there is life in movies. I might criticise a movie for poor storytelling, or for bad acting, or a lousey script, but I’m prepared to ignore all that if a movie – even once – catches the beauty of life. There are a dozen shots, in my opinion, that save River Queen. Whether it’s the bird on Kiefer Sutherland’s chest, or the scene where Morton gets a Maori tattoo. There’s just enough left of Ward’s vision, just enough weight to Morton’s performance, that despite the voice-over track and the scenes shot for nothing and happy ending that makes no sense…You will see something in this movie. Like Ward’s “wooden planet”, it’s a poetic mistake.
