Tribute to a balanced, sane voice

By FRANCES GRANT


The element which most stands out in tomorrow night's documentary History Man - Michael King (TV One, 9), is the historian's sense of balance.

Not only did King explore Maori and Pakeha cultures with the same careful scholarship and empathy in his books, his own life was a fruitful mix of writing and living in the landscapes he so loved, of work and his relationships with people from all backgrounds.

The untimely death of King makes the documentary, written and narrated by Colin Hogg, a screen version of the tributes and obituaries which poured out when the country's most popular historian was killed in a car crash in March. King had agreed to take part in the film but died before it was made, leaving his story to be told by his family, many friends, and those who were the subject of his work or collaborated with him on it.

There is footage of the man, of course, from fascinating home movies of those idyllic days in his childhood spent around Paremata and Porirua harbour to his last television appearance with Kim Hill in the wake of Don Brash's infamous Orewa speech on race relations.

From his earliest days, King's curiosity about the past was apparent. His brother Terry tells that when the pair were boys mucking around Paremata, he was interested only in his toys whereas Michael was busy investigating the landscape for evidence of the people who had gone there before.

The film takes a chronological approach, following King from childhood, through his battle with polio, to secondary school at St Patricks Silverstream and teacher Spiro Zavos, who tells us of the origins of King's famously accessible writing style.

It follows King's progress from Victoria University to his start as a journalist on the Waikato Times and the stirrings of what was to become a passion. As the Maori affairs reporter, King immediately began to work the round in a way which had not been done before, forging strong links with Tainui and stepping outside the usual Pakeha perceptions of Maori in recording events past and present, his journalism culminating in his first book, Moko. Other books followed - the biography of Te Puea, which has been called a turning point in New Zealand history studies, the ground-breaking TV series Tangata Whenua and a biography of Dame Whina Cooper.

The programme is not pure hagiography. It explores criticism of King's work and the controversy he coped with as the Maori renaissance took hold and he became partly a victim of his success. Hogg interviews those who felt King should step back and let Maori be the recorders of their past rather than a Pakeha scholar.

The soundtrack is packed with cliches (do we have to get the eerie flutes every time traditional Maori culture is mentioned?) but the documentary, made by Greenstone and filmed by Rewa Harre, is visually stunning. King's passion for the past took him to the most remote parts of the North Island, to the Chathams for his definitive history of the Moriori people, and to his home at Opoutere on the Coromandel Peninsula, and the camera makes the most of these landscapes.

This is the story of a man who had an enormous influence in educating New Zealanders about the past and, more importantly, creating a sense of identity for the future. That final interview with Kim Hill shows a man at the peak of his powers, a voice of sanity and balance in the highly emotive arena of Maori claims and Pakeha attitudes.