James and Isey

 Seen at the Alice Cinema, Christchurch, New Zealand

Cecil alone again for this trip!

Cecil says: After 6 days in New Zealand, I thought it was time to see a bit of Maori culture, so chose James & Isey as my Sunday morning film fix.

It’s a documentary just covering the lead-up to Isey’s 100th birthday in April 2019. Her son James says at one point that he wanted to mark the occasion with something special, and he reckoned nobody had done a documentary about a mother and son like this before.

Isey is a feisty lady, brought up by Maori parents who believed that speaking English would give her more of a chance in life, so she actually speaks very little of her family’s native tongue: “Kia ora,” she giggles at one point, like a British tourist might after arriving on a cruise ship and having a ring of flowers draped round their neck.

James, in contrast is a shaman, in touch with the spirits, connecting higher up than just the God we read about in the Bible (he is also Christian by the way, so this does not come across as blasphemous). He knew he had the ‘gift’ at age 5 but the powers only came through in his 40s.

He used to be a rock star, and we see video clips of him singing and gyrating to his 1980s hits; he was transitioning to a career on the stage and screen when he had a stroke, which left him paralysed for 6 months.

I’m not sure of the timeline, but he returned to his parents when his father was diagnosed with cancer, and he has lived there ever since, not really ‘caring for’ his Mum, but living with her ‘in harmony,’ as he describes it.

We are shown scenes of him doing shamanic things on a cow about to the slaughtered, on waters before a fishing trip, and towards the end sitting at the northern tip of New Zealand, his spirits’ home, where the Pacific and Tasman oceans meet.

He says he gets laughed at by mates of his brother and he probably comes across as weird to a 21st century urban and westernised community (in Auckland?), but at the actual 100th birthday party, he looks totally at ease at a ceremony of welcome by local haka performers, male and female.

His Mum Isey has a powerful voice, still. She can (usually) blow out her birthday candles, and right at the end we hear her rendition of ‘Que sera, sera.’ Pretty impressive for a centenarian. The only slightly tense moment I felt - for James especially, though he did well to hide it if he was annoyed - was when one of the older guests, a 92 year old gent, briefly stole the limelight from Isey. This was just after James had said Isey will give us a song, but we ended up hearing the 92 year old giving a song instead, and Isey never got to do her number in front of all her guests…

I feel drawn to shamanism in indigenous culture - Native American also - not that I have fully tapped into any gift I may have, even with my ‘healing hands.’ I have never yet felt any connection to Maori culture, probably because it seems based so totally on prowess in fighting or showing off strength (all those hakas leave me cold I’m afraid), but maybe James and Isey has helped me get a sense of where I’d fit in if Bea and I ever do decide to live long term in New Zealand…

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