Reflections of the Past

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Audience Member I was interested to see this documentary and how it would approach an analysis on discovering the motives as to why the two most notorious murderers in NZ history killed one of their mothers. Obviously Heavenly Creatures gave me my first insight into the case but it was interesting to see how Roman took a different approach to it, where rather than focusing on the fantastical reality the pair created for themselves as an escape from the reality of their lives, he looked further into their relationship, and how their possible sexual intentions motivated their actions. In was an interesting take on the case, but at times it felt too focused on that one reason alone and neglected other ideas behind why they carried out their actions. I mean, whether they were sexually involved or not I don't believe would have impacted the outcome, their relationship was intense, but I'm not conviced it was homosexual. Roman seemed intent on forcing this issue throughout though and that interfered and often disrupted the logical narrative. Beyond that though, and I feel bad for critiquing a debut documentary maker, but some of his editing was amateurish. He attended the screening personally and he mentioned how he liked how some of the subjects interviewed seemed to finish off each others sentences even though they were interviewed separately, and so he thought it interesting to splice their sentences together. It really didn't work. Also, and I know I'm getting picky, but there were far too many jumps in the interviews, where takes had been cut and pasted together rather shoddily. Obviously this was due to budgeting issues (he had to fund the whole project himself), but it came off unprofessional. Nevertheless, it was an interesting documenatary, it explored some avenues that hadn't been touched on before, and it was insightful to see some of the things that went on during the court case. However, on the whole I would have liked to see more questions probed, but instead felt like it just focused on one idea and ran with it. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 01/19/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Reflections of the Past

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