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In my Father’s Den (15)

In My Father's Den

Dir. Brad McGann, New Zealand/UK, 2004, 128 mins

Cast: Matthew MacFadyen, Emily Barclay, Jodie Rimmer, Miranda Otto, Colin Moy

To call the family in the film In my Father’s Den dysfunctional would be understatement in the extreme – this family makes the Jackson family look like the Brady bunch.

The film as a family drama, adopts much of the structure of the genre. An award-winning war photographer Paul (Matthew MacFadyen) arrives home for his father’s funeral after a long self-imposed exile, only to incur the distrust of his married and seemingly stable brother and cause all sorts of trouble through, it seems, no fault of his own. Their father has brought the boys up after the death of their mother, but both seem to have completely different feelings for him now that he's dead.

Most of the inhabitants of Paul's isolated New Zealand hometown treat him with the same suspicion his brother shows. The younger students at the local school, who seek the lure of something different, are charmed by him.

One female student in particular, Celia played by Emily Barclay, seems to share his wanderlust and talent, though her artistic talent lies in her writing. Paul meets her in his role as temporary teacher and befriends her, seeing in her an early version of himself. She seems to see in him an escape route from the boring town and her mother’s abusive boyfriend. To complicate matters, her mother is Paul’s ex-girlfriend, albeit when they were both in their teens, Jackie, a strong acting turn by Jodie Rimmer.

In this landlocked, small town though, it’s not long before tongues start wagging. Surely the relationship between a young, handsome world-traveler and a teenage schoolgirl must be more than a mere friendship. MacFadyen and Barclay are excellent in the lead roles and even though you want to believe there is nothing untoward going on between them, there is always the doubt in your mind that, maybe the time they spend in that aforementioned den is not just spent reading books and listening to Patti Smith on vinyl.

However, this drama doesn’t just follow the genre pattern and just when you think you have a handle on the whole story it switches tack. There are no clear heroes or villains, just human beings searching for the best life possible and making mistakes, some of them fatal, along the way.

The boys had been raised by their father after what is referred to as their mother’s “accidental” death. Paul was the only other person given access to his father’s den, or so we are led to believe, while his brother Andrew’s relationship with their mother seemed a little too close for comfort.

When Celia goes missing and Paul seems to know more about her disappearance than he is telling, he does of course become chief suspect. The film uses flashbacks to establish the fact that Paul saw Celia a lot more times than he is admitting to and effectively uses historical flashback to show how he has always rebelled against “the norm”. However, he is also shown as a man of high moral ethics having taken himself out of the shortlist for the Pulitzer prize for his photograph of a distraught, child war victim, which adds to the ambiguity over his part in Celia’s disappearance.

As layer upon layer of the story unfolds, the audience becomes more and more emotionally involved until the final scenes, which pack a huge emotional punch.

Brad McGann, the film’s director, gives the film a realistically contemporary feel, which is all the more surprising and admirable given that it is based on Maurice Gee’s 30-year-old novel. McGann, who also wrote the screenplay, decided to make the film in central New Zealand and set it in the present day after he saw that the story had as much relevance now as it would back then.

If there is a weakness in the film it would have to be in the performances of Moy and, surprisingly given her track record, Miranda Otto as Penny his agoraphobic wife, but it is he who has the line which sums up the film: “It was all a misunderstanding.” In this case the misunderstandings were anything but simple.

Joyce Dundas

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