Jocelyn Trezise

Loved the movie . The opening scene immediately took me back to an interesting NZ novel by Jane Mander, “Story of a New Zealand River” set in the Hokianga. As with the movie, it is in a remote part colonial New Zealand, includes, a rough uncultured husband and an attractive bushman neighbour plus the main protagonist, the piano. It is a dark, violent tale. As I had used this book as part of my masters thesis, I came to know it pretty well. I looked in the credits for mention of it and found nothing. Jane Campion, subsequent to the film’s release, denied any connection between the two, but the bones of the story are in both film and book. Other people must have drawn the same conclusion. I presume Campion was familiar with the novel and borrowed aspects of it for her movie. It would have been gracious of her to have acknowledged her sources of inspiration, no matter how tenuous. Read the book if you can find it in a library. It’s long out of print, published 1920 but a jolly good yarn including themes such as feminism, women’s rights, equality, relationships and survival of culture in remote surroundings.

This has been a great series all round. It has stimulated me to refresh my knowledge of Byzantine and Anatolian history and culture; the surrounding states, the Mongols and Iran. Planning to visit Turkey next year and Iran. The acting is great and characters believable. Costumes and sets magnificent and appear to be well researched. While little is actually known about Ertugrul the script wtiters and the actors have brought him and his tribe to life. I’m pleased I didn’t live then (good old Celtic stock so impossible) they seem to lurch from one disaster to the next. Quite an exhausting existence, I feel!