For anyone who has followed the career of Melanie Lynskey, you may be familiar with Hollywood’s desire to underuse her at every turn. Since her debut in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures there has been few avenues for her to really get the leading roles she deserves. This obviously changed with TV’s Yellowjackets, which finally got her the kudos she so deserved. But, with fact-based drama Pike River, Lynskey gets a film that is up to her talent too.
Pike River tells the story of the Pike River mining explosion in New Zealand that claimed the lives of 29 of the 31 people working in the mine. What follows is the story of two women now widowed Anna (Lynskey) and mother Sonya (Robyn Malcolm) as they try to fight to have their men and the other men in the mine returned for burial.
The Pike River disaster may not be a well known event in the world away from New Zealand, but as the film slowly unfolds audiences will come to realise this is a searing rebuttal to institutional injustice. What Pike River does so well is to remind audiences that no one country is without injustice. Every country in the world has companies that cut corners, that hide faults that gamble with lives and when the proverbial hits the fan try to hide their culpability.
The film never opts for big displays of grand standing, director Robert Sarkies and writer Fiona Samuel opt for a more measured approach to the story. Instead focussing on the growing friendship between Anna and Sonya. The scenes of them connecting beyond their shared tragedy is well done with Lynskey and Malcolm delivering two sublime performances of pain smouldering beneath the surface.
The flaw in the film may be it’s pacing. It’s a very languid film, occasionally dragging it’s heels as it tells a story that covers well over eight years. This may be intentional, with Sarkies and Samuel acknowledging the wheels of justice are slow, but adding that it’s only because the road is paved with corporate barriers. The strongest scenes are the early ones, scenes of grieving families demanding answers and not accepting the lies that the police or the company throw their way.
One very withering interaction sees Lynskey meet a man who informs her he’s the head of health and safety only for her to bluntly ask “if it’s so safe why did it fucking explode”? Another fantastically pointed moment sees a press conference in which the head of the mining company take the long route to bad news giving the families false hope until they are bluntly told the men are dead.
It does also criminally underuse Lucy Lawless as Trade Unionist Helen Kelly, but maybe that’s the point of the film as well. It’s not about the wider implications of safety in mining communities but really it’s about the bonds that grief can form and the way obsession can corrode. The film doesn’t often stop to examine what Anna and Sonya’s obsession is going to their families who try to move on with their lives despite their refusal to let their loved ones stay in the mine.
There is also a very uncomfortable cameo from former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who may have been instrumental in placing legislation that would help the women but comes antithetical to the anti-authority feeling the film has.
This is not a Norma Rae or Erin Brockovich style triumph over the system type film, instead it’s a quietly powerful examination of the devastation corporate greed can bring upon people and how bonds that are formed through shared pain can be powerful enough to enact change – including changing the government.
Pike River is available on Digital HD from 9th February
