Adaptations of unease

Abstract

The production of literary adaptations in New Zealand is connected to film funding policy. Adaptations are expected to be both nationally distinctive and internationally commercial, appealing to as broad an audience as possible, because New Zealand's population is too small to provide a good return on investment. In recent years this has resulted in a trend to use Hollywood scriptwriting models with 'local treatments'. A close look at the scriptwriting stage of three New Zealand feature films that are adaptations of New Zealand literature - Sleeping Dogs (Donaldson, NZ, 1977), Rain (Jeffs, NZ, 2001), and In My Father's Den (McGann, NZ/UK, 2004) - shows the development of a different, nationally focused argument in the wider international debates about adaptation. The adaptations cited above tend to be based on darker themes and subject matter (described by Sam Neill in Cinema of Unease as the 'culture of unease'). My thesis argues that the process of adaptation of the original scripts is similarly 'uneasy'. I discuss the critical reception of each of the films to reveal the role New Zealand's 'national imaginary' and its representation in these adaptations. The 'culture of unease' has dominated discussions of New Zealand's national cinema for many years. Literary adaptation plays a role in the development of a national imaginary and its associated culture in film. This is developed through thematic treatments in individual adaptations and in the process of adaptation.