When a film tackles real-world trauma, the stakes for sensitivity and truth are impossibly high. However, director Robert Sarkies rises to that challenge with a film that is startling in its restraint and deeply emotional in what it chooses to illuminate rather than dramatize.
At its core, Pike River follows the aftermath of the 2010 Pike River coal mine disaster on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, one of the nation’s worst industrial tragedies, where 29 men lost their lives. What makes this film special is that Sarkies refrains from sensory reenactment of the methane explosion. Instead, he focuses the lens on the families left behind and their years-long pursuit of truth, accountability and justice.
Leading the cast are Melanie Lynskey as Anna Osborne and Robyn Malcolm as Sonya Rockhouse, two women bound together by grief, tenacity, and an unlikely friendship that becomes the film’s emotional engine. Anna, a devoted wife and mother who lost her husband in the disaster, and Sonya, whose son Ben was one of the miners killed, are drawn together in the aftermath of loss and transformed from grieving citizens into unstoppable advocates. Both gave incredible performances that made me cry several times during the film; watching Lynskey on screen is always a treat as she is truly one of the most underrated performers of my generation. This was my first film with Malcolm involved, and this performance has encouraged me to check out more of her work.
With a screenplay by Fiona Samuel, the film is grounded less in the dramatic and more in the lived experiences, which is how I feel films backdropped in horrific tragedy should be made. Topics like this run the risk of being sensationalized when the technical aspects of recreating a catastrophe are celebrated and the director rewarded for their skill vs focussing on the real victims. Pike River observes its characters with clarity and respect, and what emerges is a story about the humanity that persists even when institutions fail. I really respect how both Sarkie and Samuel honour the lived experience of those who face an impossible reality and the painful suffering of bureaucratic bullshit.
I really felt that I was going through it with them as viewer; the films pace was unhurried and a true reflection of the reality of protests, legal battles and constant roadblocks. This film reminds the audience that the road to justice is a humiliation ritual for those affected and it requires us to not just watch but to think, feel and to sit with discomfort of the abused, that is how anyone can survive something like this. That is where our humanity breathes when all else feels defeated.
Pike River was a 10/10 watch for me and I highly recommend it for viewing.
