User Reviews

This movie is more comical than anything. That's not to say it's a laugh riot - we are constantly reminded this is war and that people die. Thus there is a tension in the air (among other smelly things) throughout the comic proceedings. I like how it didn't say that there are good guys or bad guys just soldiers doing their jobs and trying to lighten up despite the pressures. It really shows a lot about camaraderie. I also thought the black crow that appears (maybe a raven I couldn't tell) was cool since the tone shifts entirely on one symbol and the end makes you wish it hadn't ended. Funky little short I wouldn't mind watching again 8/10

Kiwi here. Just watched this again on YT having seen it once, 10(?) years since, when it was broadcast on subscription TV. I'm prompted to weigh in having read the reviews on this site.

While not at all inaccessible to non-NZers, I see a lot of the imagery and interactions between the actors conveying a series of culturally coded ideas that would be more familiar to people who grew up in NZ when veterans of WWII were more widespread in our society. [damonisho: I believe the setting is the desultory fighting around the ruined town and monastery at Monte Cassino in 1944].

Beneath the uniforms, the grime, the physical burden of their equipment and privations, and the psychological oppression of imminent injury or death we are reminded that these are *boys*. When the anxiety of their isolated position and uncertainty as to the enemy's whereabouts abates to a degree, we see them revert to the boy-ish behaviours that are instantly recognisable to all boys via observation or first-hand experience. To the chap who decried the 'fart joke' I offer this context and, further, an observation that the NZ Army in this era was very much an adjunct of the British Army whose regulations offered scant accommodation for the cultural idiosyncracies of non-British service men and women. Yes, there are displayed a few well-travelled tropes, not least of all the "All Quiet on the Western Front" homage, albeit from the other side of the telescopic sight. None of these detract from my appreciation of a short story in film that I still find moving.

PS Many years ago I watched a prominent Maori politician being interviewed for a documentary television programme about Maori humour in which he recounted, "To an Englishman a situation can be serious but it is never hopeless; to Maori a situation can be hopeless .... but it is never serious". Doubtless this is not original and I expect some variation of this 'not-quite-a-joke' exists in every society. For those with sufficient time and inclination I'd recommend heading over to the NZ Electronic Text Collection, a digitisation project administered by Victoria University of Wellington, and read the official history for 28 (Maori) Battalion. Written in an era where issues of cultural difference didn't immediately induce a duck-and-cover reversion to bland non-speak until the "news cycle" had progressed, it is revelatory regarding the colonialist attitudes that dogged the battalion's formation, eg insistence that all the officers be British or of British extraction, and the ways and means by which these changed as the war progressed. It's also replete with anecdotes that illustrate the quote at the head of this paragraph.

"Tama tu" is a 17-minute live action short film from 2005, so this one is already over 10 years old. It has received a bit more attention recently again as Waititi's Hollywood career is really turning into something special these days, more of an actor though as of a filmmaker, but with this one here he is the writer and director. And this little movie really received a great deal of awards attention at actually relatively important events too like Palm Springs, Berlin and Sundance, maybe also because Waititi was an Oscar nominee at this point already, so a somewhat big name actually. Well not really that big though. Anyway, there is no spoken dialogue in here, so no matter where you are from, you won't need any subtitles. This is the story of a couple soldiers sitting in a deserted house and apparently not having to go into battle already (again). We watch them in the ways they spend their time their and witness their interactions with each other. It is a rather light movie, even if the comedy also may have to do with them trying to forget the cruelties of war. But is it a good movie? I dare say no. Even if not all the moments are so weak like when Waititi relied on fart-related humor, there is still nothing memorable about this one. I am baffled by the awards attention it received, but maybe then Waititi is just not my preferred choice as a filmmaker as I remember finding his Oscar-nominated work really overrated too. Back to this one here, i give it a thumbs-down as you maybe already guessed correctly. Don't watch.