River Queen sails into calmer waters

Film director Vincent Ward hopes to have River Queen on screens at the end of the year.

After a traumatic glitch in filming the Wanganui River-based historical saga River Queen - when the film's insurers sacked director Vincent Ward - he was stopped at immigration when he flew back into Sydney. Was there a problem? Yes. Ward's passport photo no longer resembled the man standing in front of the customs officer.

"My hair turned grey in the space of eight days, so much so the customs person said the photo didn't look like me, I looked so old. 'Yeah, well,' I told her, 'I worked on River Queen'."

Ward is laughing as he tells the story, but he's serious when he admits the film has been "the hardest film I've had to tackle".

In Auckland briefly last week to wrap up additional shots and record extra dialogue, Ward is back heading the project after October's unceremonious dumping for reasons which have never been fully disclosed.

"One day I'm going to talk about what really happened," says Ward, "but the main thing for me is that I'm trying to keep my eye on the ball, trying to do everything to make the best film I can."

When Ward was ousted, the final days of filming continued under the hand of cinematographer Alun Bollinger, who kept in touch with Ward and also, by all reports, maintained the faith in Ward's vision shared by the cast and crew of 140. The sacking, it seems now, was a giant hiccup - but he's once again in charge.

"There are always challenges in making a film, but this one had more than most. It was kind of like all the challenges you can possibly have happened in the one movie. But I've managed to get through and we will work collaboratively to make the best picture we can."

Ward has spent the past three months in London editing the movie, while British composer Karl Jenkins, OBE, formerly of the band Soft Machine, has created a soundtrack Ward is really pleased with.

"Life is pretty much on the hoof at this stage. I'm flying around the world at the moment doing ADR [additional dialogue recording]. People ask me where I'm living these days and I say I'm either on the aisle seat or the window seat.

"My girlfriend lives in Auckland, my mother lives in Greytown, sometimes I live in Sydney and sometimes in Los Angeles and right now I'm living in London. I'm pretty confused about it all."

Confused about his life, maybe, but he is clearly set on getting River Queen on the screen. Ward's hopes are for a summer premiere at the end of the year.

He is bothered by the epithet that has grown around the film's title: the troubled River Queen.

"This phrase, it's inaccurate. First of all, we had a fantastic safety record. We had one person who hurt their shoulder with a sprain, but they were right within a couple of weeks. That's out of a 140-person crew over 60 days, so troubled is really inaccurate."

Add up Samantha Morton's serious illness with flu, alleged friction with the British star, a supposed Maori curse, Bollinger's back injury and then Ward's sacking, and that's some list of challenges. But all films are troubled as any student of the film-making process will know.

"These larger films, particularly if you've got a modicum of resources, are really demanding," Ward explains. "But rather than working on something like Power Rangers, or one of the American films that come here, a lot of people went out of their way to work on this and put a lot into it.

"It's a story that normally wouldn't be told. These stories, we get a chance to tell only about once every 10 years because they are a little bit more ambitious. There are rich stories in our history but generally speaking there isn't the will to tell them. There isn't that kind of belief in ourselves and in cinema you've got to put your money where your mouth is."

Ward has spent the Past week in Auckland shooting pick-up shots with Rawiri Pene, who plays actor Samantha Morton's son Tama, and Temuera Morrison, who plays the chief Te Kaipo.

On Saturday, he flew to Los Angeles for final work with Kiefer Sutherland, working around the actor's 24 TV series schedule. Ward describes Sutherland as "incredibly personable to work with, always prepared, a very real kind of person".

So have there been some bonuses in making River Queen, his first New Zealand-based feature since 1988's The Navigator? "Well, nice isn't the word I would use," he says, laughing. "Not the first word that came into my head. Definitely the most challenging film I've ever done but I think now we are pulling it into really muscular shape.

"What's interesting to us is that something positive is coming out of this movie and a lot of people are working incredibly hard to make that happen."