The Navigator

An absorbing story that links medieval fears and fortunes to our times, while confirming Ward as an original talent

The Navigator: a Medieval Odyssey, New Zealand, 1988

Director: Vincent Ward
Production co: Arenafilm / Film Investment Corporation
Producers: John Maynard, Gary Hannam
Executive Producer: Gary Hannam
Screenplay: Vincent Ward, Kely Lyons, Geoff Chapple
Editor: John Scott
Music: Davood Tabrizi
Director of photography: Geoffrey Simpson
Production designer: Sally Campbell
First assistant director: Greg Stitt
Camera operator: Allen Guilford

With: Bruce Lyons (Connor), Chris Hayward (Arno), Hamish McFarlane (Griffin), Marshall Napier (Searle), Noel Appleby (Ulf), Paul Livingstone (Martin), Sarah Pierse (Linnet), Jay Lavea Laga’aia (Jay)

35mm, 93 minutes, PG

Watch The Navigator trailer (8.57MB; 2.24 minutes)

In Cumbria in 1348, the year of the Black Death, a nine-year-old boy is haunted by fragments of a dream about a celestial city. His brother decides that the dream offers their only hope of survival – so five medieval men follow the boy on a quest which leads them to New Zealand, the Antipodes, 1988.

“Navigator is essentially about an act of faith – people believing they can change the course of their life. Some historians have likened the 14th century to the 20th century – both calamitous ages. The 14th century had plague, war and holocausts and this century has seen wars on a vast scale and the potential for the further holocuast. They were both calamitous ages. I liked the parallel of the little isolated village in Cumbria being a pocked skipped over by the plague, and of New Zealand, too, being a little pocket separate from the rest of the world. I believe faith and hope are prerequisites for action and change, regardless of the odds. Basically what I wanted to do was look at the 20th century through medieval eyes. It’s as if the demons of our contemporary world – our technological monsters of destruction – could be foreseen in the nightmares of medieval men. A dream of hell coming out of a medieval life that was bleak and colourless. By contrast, the 20th century, as seen in a vision, would seem richer and more vivid. For this reason, I use colour to delineate the child’s vision of the 20th century and black and white for medieval times. To constantly remind the viewer that this is a medieval vision of the 20th century, the 20th century had to be portrayed in medieval colours… In medieval times, as always, the rich had the most powerful voice. Visionaries like Nostradamus, a doctor, well-off, elite, trained at the University of Paris, are remembered in history. But I liked the idea of giving a voice to the underprivileged – a nonentity, a mere child, unimportant in world events, but whose vision is pure and clear. In a sense, the act of faith made by those who follow this child on his quest has a parallel in the making of the film. It was a very hard film to make, and I was lucky to have a producer who made that act of faith, put himself on the line both professionally and personally, and stuck to what proved to be a four year task.” — Vincent Ward, production notes

“The Navigator, subtitled ‘A Medieval Odyssey’, is the second movie by the New Zealand writer-director Vincent Ward and it quite literally connects the blighted, spiritually-certain fourteenth-century of the Black Death with the bloated, spiritually-bereft twentieth century of Aids. A young visionary in 1348 Cumbria tells his fellow miners that their community may survive the plague if they place a spire on a distant cathedra before dawn. So from their grim, snowbound Lake District (which resembles the Nordic world of Carl Dreyer) they dig down an old mine-shaft to the other side of the world, emerging in an Eastman-coloured present-day Auckland. This short, intense picture is like a collaboration between William Golding and Gene Roddenberry, The Spire meets Star Trek, and is the work of someone with a distinctive talent and vision. Ward is an antipodean Werner Herzog.” — Philip French, The Observer

“The Navigator is a remarkable second feature from director Vincent Ward, whose first full-length film Vigil, was selected for main competition at Cannes in 1984. It is remarkable because of its absorbing story that links medieval fears and fortunes to our times, while confirming Ward as an original talent… The formidable skills of Ward are shown in the way his story works, not only as adventure, but as the love story of two brothers and a parable of faith and religion. As the medievals joust with the paraphernalia of a night-bound, modern city, in their striving to reach the cathedral at its heart, Ward conjures a series of striking sequences and images. The best affirm, invariably with humor, the timeless ascendancy of individual human spirit against the forces that would dehumanize, whether it is Griffin momentarily mesmerized by a wall of TV screens beaming their message or Connor hurtling through the night clinging to the front of a ‘monster’ train. From the convincing detail of the 14th century locations to the uneasy, slumbering, contemporary metropolis, Ward’s inspiration is apparent, and actors and technicians give their best. Geoffrey Simpson’s photography – stark black and white for the Cumbrian sequences, color for the enactment of Griffin’s dream and vision – is of the highest order, with score by Iranian composer Davood Tabrizi (domiciled in Sydney) empathetic with the whole. Fine performances are delivered by McFarlane and Lyones, and also Marshall Napier and Pauling Livingston as Cumbrians Searle and Martin… As the first coproduction between the New Zealand and Australian film commissions, following producer John Maynard’s difficulty in raising all the necessary finance in Ward’s homeland, it sets a sterling precedent for future joint enterprises in feature filmmaking between the two countries.” — Mike Nicolaidi, Variety, 11 May 1988

Screenings: The Navigator screened on 28 June 2006 as part of a season selected by film maker and former Film Archive staff member Rupert Reynolds-Maclean.