NZIFF Review: Out of the Blue (2006)

REVIEW | ISSUE NINE | WHAKAKATA / HUMOUR

Written by Trevor Pronoso |  Letterboxd: @CleverGurl | Instagram: @trev.pro | Contributing Writer

Out of the Blue (2006)

dir. Robert Sarkies

Aotearoa New Zealand, 103 mins

During the post-screening Q&A, actor Matthew Sunderland shares something remarkably revealing when asked about the process of getting into the character of David Grey: that it was relatively easy to understand the psyche of David because most of what he needed to know was covered in the book, Aramoana: Twenty-two hours of terror by Bill O'Brien, which Out of the Blue bases its chronology of events on. I'm genuinely inclined to believe him because David is not a particularly "complex" human being, which, to me, is the biggest dilemma the film feebly scratches at amid all its failed cinematic attempts at resolution and understanding. When faced with the cold, unsentimental certainty of action and its consequence—a man with a gun on a killing spree—New Zealand can only cower behind the veneer of "nuance" and "complexity" and "plurality" in trying to rationalise the psychology of a man who is as much of a victim of his deteriorating mental health as he is disadvantaged by his low socio-economic status; that's it. The simplicity of his actions becomes unbearable because they are already accounted for and telegraphed in advance. The tragedy then is realising that the happy-go-lucky bicultural nation that New Zealand mythologises itself to be is perfectly compatible with a massacre like Aramoana. A simple myth butting heads against the simple truth.

Out of the Blue is fundamentally reactionary, to the extent that Sarkies admits the tragedy is beginning to resemble a historical precedent in light of the 2019 Christchurch attack, and even more so 20 years after the film's premiere. Nothing like Aramoana has happened before in Aotearoa, which leads Sarkies to ask the forbidden question: how do you cinematically convey the immediate events that resulted in this national trauma? In trying to answer that question, the film becomes paranoid and myopic in equal measures. Sarkies wants to see as much as possible with as little as possible, and vice versa. We may not know what David is thinking, though we can bear witness to both CCTV footage of him lashing out at a bank for being denied cashing a cheque while also being able to hear his hallucinations and intermittent split-second flashbacks. Our vision may be constantly pigeonholed as the telephoto lens substitutes most of its establishing shots for close-ups of key objects within the mise-en-scène, yet we are granted the luxury of inhabiting multiple perspectives of the townspeople, intercutting among their differing reactions to the active shooter who may be lurking outside their windows. The police begin powerless and then finally restore order, yet what form of social order remains to be maintained? Is David a bad actor, or is the whole play itself rotten?

Steeped in such callousness, Sarkies is knowingly sentimental about all the familial relationships affected by this tragedy, because nothing else offers cathartic closure for an event that could so easily have been avoided. Yet New Zealanders—comfortable in their geographical seclusion and low population density—convince themselves that they know and respect all thy neighbours, mistake their small world for the ideal status quo of universal human existence. The unknowable, the uncontrollable, is what New Zealanders fear, and Aramoana will continually raise this question and will continually be ignored until it is answered in blood once again: what if I don't know my neighbour?