DIRECTORS NOTES - Toby Mills
This film is inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet.
Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease;
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as mad men’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I had sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
Ko taku aaroha me he kirikaa, e matenui tonu ana, moona e aahuru roa tonu ana i te mate.
E whaangaitia ana ki te mea e tohu ana i te mate.
Kia makonatia te hiakai rangirua matemate.
Ko taku take, ko te kai aahuru o taku aaroha, e riri ana inaa mo aana whakaritenga i whakaririkatia, kua whakarere i a au, a, ka au te moorearea kua tautoko ko te poo he mina, na te rauora I awere.
Kua pahure taku oranga, kua pahure taku takenga.
E manawawera ana i te whakariuka ano.
Ko ooku whakaaro me taku kauhau, me he tangata poorangi,e ahu poka mai ana I te tika, he whakapehapeha te whakahua;
Ina kua whakataua e au, he tootika koe, kua whakaaarotia ha maarama koe,
ko koe e tino pangopango ana, e Poo kerekere ana.
This is the seed that spurns Te Po Uriuri.
Shakespeare`s poetic/lyrical qualities evident in his written word draw me to another language - my own.
To me this sonnet explores as its central theme, the intensity of love passion and how this can become so overpowering that all sense of self becomes lost. We find ourselves delving into the dark world of jealously, obsession, violence and malevolence, we become lost from ourselves.
Te Po Uriuri is one such story. Set in the same time when Shakepeare was alive.
Our emotional centre, the heart, becomes the central focus. We explore the theme of how we place this emotion of love into the physical body of the heart.
The heartbeat drives us through the film - until there must be silence.
