Out of the Blue

"In its distilled, composed articulation of tragedy amidst a prolonged drought of truly courageous local films, Out of the Blue can perhaps in time, be considered something of a watershed in New Zealand cinema. It is far too important to avoid..." Tim Wong

Out of the Blue, New Zealand, 2006

Director: Robert Sarkies
Producer: Steven O'Meagher, Timothy Whiter, Tim White
Writer: Bill O'Brien, Robert Sarkies, Graeme Tetley
Original Music by Victoria Kelly        
Cinematography: Greig Fraser        
Film Editing by: Annie Collins        
Casting by: Rachael Bullock        
Production Design by: Philip Ivey        
Art Direction by: David Kolff, Ken Turner        
Costume Design by: Lesley Burkes-Harding

With: Karl Urban (Nick Harvey), Matthew Sunderland (David Gray), Lois Lawn (Helen Dixon), Simon Ferry (Gary Holden), Tandi Wright (Julie-Anne Bryson), Paul Glover (Paul Knox), William Kircher (Stu Guthrie), Georgia Fabish (Chiquita Holden), Fayth Rasmussen (Stacey Percy)

Based on the book Aramoana: Twenty Two Hours of Terror by Bill O'Brien  

102 minutes, R15-violence & content that may disturb

Based on the Aramoana Massacre that occurred on 13 November and 14 November 1990. Resident David Gray, an unemployed gun collector, went on a rampage in which 13 people were shot dead, before Gray himself was shot by police.

"Certainly the most hardened New Zealand film to emerge since Once Were Warriors, Out of the Blue is signposted by a series of innocuous coastal panoramas that belie its underlying trauma. At regular intervals, director Robert Sarkies reverts back to these sites of tidal calm – idyllic shorelines, undulating landscapes, blazoned sunsets on the horizon – as if to provide respite amidst the unfurling tragedy of November 13, 1990. But as touristy images synonymous with the ‘greenbelt’ of New Zealand cinema, they are in their postcard ubiquity a timely reminder of the darker stories that remain hidden and untold. In its scarcity, a film of this nature also highlights a reluctance to tell such stories, if not an unwillingness to abandon the safety net of ‘regionalism’ in favour of a less conservative, more divisive filmmaking – the kind freely divorced from a pervading national stereotype of scenic beauty and perpetually friendly people. Out of the Blue boldly, assuredly goes where few New Zealand films have gone before in confronting this dichotomy between the nation’s ‘100% Pure’ (self) consciousness, and if you will, its darkened subconscious of suppressed tragedies and terrible things present and past – in this instance, one man’s propensity for unspeakable violence. Just as Lee Tamahori panned away from ‘Middle Earth’ to reveal a dishevelled, urban bleakness in Once Were Warriors’ opening shot, Sarkies curtails Aramoana’s picturesque, using it only to underline a certain cultural imperviousness to the possibility of terrorism and mass murder at home. So often seduced by Aotearoa’s natural splendour, this is a film more concerned with what lies beneath the long white cloud. We ignore it at our own peril. Indeed, what’s infinitely disturbing here is the sheer disbelief that accompanies every action and reaction to the massacre; the residents portrayed are understandably shocked, but it’s in the police who respond to the shootings – ill-equipped, frightened and hesitant, they are not the trigger-happy enforcers of American cop movies – that proceedings gather a surreal, unfathomable, and very human terror. Seldom do the horrors of Columbine or Beslan hit close to home, relegated along with other mass murders and suicide bombings to the world pages with a numbing regularity. But of sudden and unexpected magnitude, David Gray’s rampage – leaving thirteen dead – penetrates deep, wounding not only the people of Aramoana, but the psyche of New Zealand as a sheltered South Pacific haven. Though this film shares its name with a gaudy Delta Goodrem power ballad, as a pointed reference to unforeseeably tragic events, it could not be more appropriate. Of some debate is the film’s study of David Gray, which briefly derails into psychopathic tropes via grating, low-drone ambience and visually distorted perspectives (namely, Gray’s altercation at the bank). As the film’s villain, he is noticeably outcast – we see him laughed at by children, berated by restless neighbours, and disturbed by suspicious police officers – while in a further effort to plunge us into the headspace of a killer, Sarkies forces the camera uncomfortably close, either in direct proximity, or by smudging his surroundings into an indiscriminate blur. In light of the Columbine-esque Elephant, what this lacks in subtlety and a total absence of reasoning, it makes up for in its ever-so-concise portrayal of a gun-collecting loner, whose exact motives for murder are never defined, hazed-out somewhere in between a shallow focus of anger and paranoia. And the legacy of Gus Van Sant reverberates elsewhere, with the killings, viewed sparingly and from a helpless distance, recalling the chilling arbitrariness of that film, laying bare Aramoana’s streets in the same way Elephant’s high school corridors were randomly flushed out. In its distilled, composed articulation of tragedy amidst a prolonged drought of truly courageous local films, Out of the Blue can perhaps in time, be considered something of a watershed in New Zealand cinema. It is far too important to avoid, though may be too painful for some. It is at once paralysing and cathartic. I don’t think I’ll ever see it again.” — Tim Wong, Lumier Reader, 21 October 2006

"Out of the Blue is a restrained film about a mass killing in a small community and that restraint means that it often plays out in miniature: one scene standing in for many, one person representing several, a gesture or a look summing up an entire person. It’s a kind of minimalism that is probably a result of budgetary necessity, but has been turned into an aesthetic advantage: as shot in Aramoana and Long Beach by Australian cinematographer Greig Fraser, the film is effortlessly beautiful and unnervingly quiet, and all of the actors seem to be completely at home in their characters. No one really stars here – not Matt Sunderland as killer David Gray, not Karl Urban as quietly heroic cop Nick Harvey – but the acting is uniformly excellent, and not just from them and Tandi Wright, William Kircher and Simon Ferry, from whom you might expect good acting, but from such perfectly cast unknowns as Lois Lawn, Georgina Fabish and Fayth Rasmussen, with the last two playing kids who lose parents. A natural comparison for this kind of story might be the Gus Van Sant film inspired by the Columbine killings, Elephant. That film took a poetic, time-bending approach to the subject, while also immersing us deep within the perspective of those experiencing the tragedy: from nowhere, without any fanfare or warning, here come the killers. But in a way, Van Sant’s job was easier than that of Out of the Blue’s writers Robert Sarkies and Graeme Tetley: as horrific as it is, at a deep level most of us can understand the impulses behind high-school killings; there’s some atavistic memory of bullying or humiliation. It’s much, much harder to understand or explain what Gray did. Sarkies and Tetley don’t really try, but what is touching about Out of the Blue – it’s perhaps the saddest thing about this sad film – is the pity that they seem to express for Gray. It’s there in two passing moments. One comes near the end, when Gray is finally caught and shot by the Anti-Terrorist Squad, and he’s on the ground, tied up like a pig and shrieking, and the Anti-Terrorist Squad guys look at each other and light up cigarettes, like hunters celebrating a kill. The other comes earlier, when Gray is hiding out in an empty crib in the middle of the night. He unpacks a radio and flicks between stations. None of us could have any idea what Gray chose to listen to – maybe he wanted to know what they were saying about him on talkback? Maybe he soothed his nerves with classical music? – but Sarkies has imagined that the Chills song “Pink Frost” played on the radio as Gray listened and he has sneaked a second or two into the film. It’s hauntingly apt. The Chills song came from a dream that singer Martin Phillipps had about killing, and his guilt and terror on waking might match the feelings Gray had at the time, when he stopped to reflect or when the full horror of Aramoana dawned on him: “How can I live when you see what I’ve done?” - Philip Mathews, The Listener  

"An effectively harrowing and non-exploitative recap of real-life events, Out of the Blue dramatizes New Zealand's largest mass-murder – the Nov. 13, 1990, slaying in small seaside town Aramoana of 13 residents by well-armed local loner David Gray, whose reasons for going homicidal died with him the next morning. Chilling, often moving docudrama focuses not so much on the mayhem or murderer, but on the bewildered, occasionally courageous reactions of ordinary citizens caught in the inexplicable violence. Second feature for helmer Robert Sarkies, following 1999's well-received Scarfies, could parlay critical acclaim into foreign arthouse and small-screen sales. Rigorously avoiding conventional thriller portent or pacing, Sarkies and co-scenarist Graham Tetley introduce the village itself waking up to a sunny early summer day, catching various townies going through their usual paces. It doesn't take long, however, to pick out the odd man out – middle-aged Gray (Matthew Sunderland). Appearing reclusive and paranoid, he ventures from his dingy shack to ride his bicycle then a bus to the gun store at a nearby larger burg. We later discover, however, that he's already got a regular arsenal housed in his refrigerator. Half an hour in, what looks like the latest in a series of recurrent yelling matches between Gray and one neighbor – over Gray's threatening behavior toward local kids – abruptly turns into a fatal shooting. The perp then sets fire to the neighbor's house, which has several children inside; one kid escapes, wounded, to get the first word out. Drawn by the fire, a couple of elderly gawkers and a family in a passing truck are the next to make the mistake of stopping to see what the trouble is. Even after fleeing residents warn others that there's a nut who "has a gun," not everyone stays away. Police and ambulances are soon on the way, but they are prevented from evacuating the people who are trapped, dead and wounded – some left bleeding on the ground for hours on end – by Gray, who shoots at anything that moves. A couple of missed opportunities to bring him down leave the perp running loose around the area's brush and homes as night falls. Authorities have little choice but to keep everyone locked down and hope he'll resurface before doing more harm. In the end, Gray appears to choose "suicide by police," running from his gassed home (where he'd returned), screaming and waving a gun some hours later. Pic makes no effort to explain or analyze his actions. Little remains known about him beyond a few ominous interests (gun collecting, survivalist literature) and suspicions that he may have been schizophrenic. But the focus here is not on the "why" but the "what," as "Blue" vividly depicts the confusion, panic, horror, and even tedium of average folk waiting out a catastrophe without knowing quite what's happened. Mixed pro and non-pro thesps create a wholly natural sense of community, while dialogue, staging, editing and sparse use of music further underline unvarnished realism. The random way in which some residents became involved in the tragedy (or were fortunate enough not to) is shown by the script which avoids a traditional dramatic-arc emphasis on particular characters, though two do emerge as nominal leads: policeman Nick Harvey (Karl Urban from Lord of the Rings), one of the first on the scene, and Helen Dickson (72-year-old amateur Lois Lawn), a neighbor who crawled repeatedly along a drainage ditch to check on a wounded man despite having just had hip surgery. Eventual realization of the toll that Gray exacted – including several very young children – is handled with wrenching restraint. Design and tech contribs are all first-rate, with special kudos due Greig Fraser's cinematography, which delivers all necessarily immediacy without caving to the current vogue for overly jittery hand-held work. — Dennis Harvey, Variety, 24 September 2006

Screenings: Out of the Blue screened on 4 & 5 March 2011.