A beautifully photographed movie where the characters seem more than usually shaped by their surroundings. The unremitting cold wet climate in the unforgiving New Zealand hills forces those making a life there to spend more of an effort than your average city dweller. The father dies, the grandfather goes crazy, the mother seeks another life or another partner and the little girl accepts it all because it is all she has known. I was reminded of Samuel Beckett and also of Werner Herzog and perhaps there is something of each of them here. The constant and wearing daily effort just to stay alive and an urge to test oneself further, almost to build castles in the sky. As with the writer there is also just enough humour to keep us engaged and to distract us occasionally from the absolute desperation and futility of those efforts. Not an easy or speedy watch but thoughtful, worthwhile and ultimately optimistic.
