What gives PIKE RIVER power is the potency of fact.
This affecting and effective film follows the true story of Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse superbly played by Melanie Lynskey & Robyn Malcolm, two ordinary women who lost their loved ones in New Zealand’s 2010 Pike River Mine explosion that claimed the lives of 29 men, and who have become leading voices in the families’ fight for truth and accountability.
Truth and accountability, health and safety, convictions moral, social and political are the cornerstones of this impressive film, that provides a stiff injection of social comment, an inoculation against indifference, a vaccination sorely needed by the mine operators and legislators depicted in the story.
The explosion not only extinguished the lives of spouses and sons but accelerated a breakup with hope when authorities lied about rescue and then refused to recover and reunite the dead with their families.
Written by Fiona Samuel, the script features dialogue that rings as true as the dates and the facts on which it is pinned. Fact based, yet PIKE RIVER is not a documentary, it is a narrative drama, with the quite reasonable slant of the working class standing up against culpable corporation and gutless government.
Beautifully crafted by director Robert Sarkies, PIKE RIVER mines the screenplay’s rich vein of verisimilitude and infuses it with subtle lyricism and astute symbolism. A game of pub pool early in the picture is one of the movie’s most memorable metaphors.
Cinematographer Gin Loane luxuriates in the natural landscapes of mountains, rivers and forests and strikes perfect moods for domestic dwellings, the local pub and court rooms.
Lynskey and Malcolm lead a uniformly strong supporting cast who create a palpable sense of community both fractured and united by tragedy.
People power personified, PIKE RIVER is a living legacy to the lives lost and testimony to the tenacity of those who fought so that they would not be forgotten.
