The Dark Horse

The Dark Horse

Directed by James Robertson

Rating: A+

The Dark Horse echoes the conversation around Maori urbanisation started by Once Were Warriors and, in my opinion, supersedes it.

Set in Gisborne, The Dark Horse tells the based-on-life story of Genesis Potini, who is a one-time chess champion. Released from institutionalised care for severe bi-polar disorder, he is forced to move in with his gang-member brother. In a move to restore normalcy to his own life, he joins a chess club for kids.

Many aspects of the plot are clichéd, but it’s the cliché that opens a new and more honest vantage point on this type of story, a classic “overcoming of adversity for a shot at the championship.” Genesis teaches disadvantaged youth, leading them on to a tournament in The Big City, complete with montage scenes of them growing as a group. But the reality of the situation is powerfully banal: the tournament is in a dank community hall, their team is scrutinised by a white-gaze based on their class and ethnicity, and Genesis’s recovery is slow. No one’s surprised, It’s the way of things – Gisborne not Hollywood.

The central theme is the potency of culture. Characters of Maori decent who are completely disengaged with their heritage have replaced their culture with one of violence, aggression, bitterness and rage. The Dark Horse pulls focus onto the innocence of youth, and most poignantly, the brutal way in which gang culture rips this from the lives of the children it touches.

This film engages in an astute exploration of mental health. There is an intimacy in the cinematic realisation of Genesis’ lapses in connection with reality. The audience is an intimate witness to his suffering and attempts at recovery. The sense being that this is a directly proportional portrayal, neither downplayed nor sensationalised.

James Napier Robertson has worked in New Zealand media as an actor since the early 2000s. In 2009 he wrote and directed his first feature length film, I’m Not Harry Jenson. With his only other directing and writing credit being a short film, The Dark Horse is astonishing.
This article first appeared in Issue 20, 2014.
Posted 12:53am Monday 18th August 2014 by Sydney Lehman.