I saw a documentary at Sundance this year about Indigenous Americans trying to reclaim the bodies of their ancestors that are still being held by various museums around the world, and it underscored the obscene arrogance of white colonizers and race scientists who viewed Indigenous peoples as little more than artifacts to be studied, or curiosities to be prodded, or treasures to be owned.
I thought a lot about this while watching Mārama, a gorgeous, bloody, and effective gothic horror film from New Zealand. It takes place largely at a darkened manor in 19th-century England, as a Maori woman with the English name of Mary arrives responding to a mysterious letter. Mary doesn’t entirely understand her ancestry, and her sister has disappeared, too, so there’s a lot for her to figure out, and especially when she’s more or less coerced into serving as governess for the daughter of the rich man who owns the manor.
What becomes clear is that this man and his colleagues see themselves as some sort of caretakers of Maori people and culture, despite the fact that they are English through and through. It’s the insidious paternalistic viewpoint that allowed generations of colonizers to justify their actions and to appropriate cultural practices to suit their own ends, or simply to pull out as party tricks. Fortunately for the audience, as we get angrier, so does Mary, and this becomes what we hope it will, which is to say our hero gets her revenge.
The movie does occasionally drag or get a little narratively muddy, but at less than 90 minutes, these aren’t huge problems. And it’s often stunning to look at, even in dark scenes with just a single firelight. Mārama does a good job of wrapping up a hugely important topic in a genre that’s getting a lot of traction right now, and even if nothing’s really changed on a societal level by the end, we do at least get to see some evil guys suffer.
Mārama is on VOD.
