Review:
"Mārama"
VOD Release Date: May 15, 2026 Rating: R Running Time: 89 minutes “Where I come from, women have mana. It’s dignity and it’s power,” Ariāna Osborne states with righteous indignation late in Mārama, writer/director Taratoa Stappard’s Victorian Gothic chiller that tears to shreds cultural erasure and appropriation with both fury and intelligence. Fueled by a mix of increasing confusion and anger, the mesmerizing and tenacious Osborne stars as Mary Stevens, a young Māori woman who travels from New Zealand to England to learn what happened to the parents she never knew. Instead, she taps into the lifeforce known as mana that the Māori people believe resides within anyone and everything. And Mārama is about reclaiming the dignity and the power Mary speaks of from an cruel and exploitative colonizer that wrongly believes they are acting in the best interests of the indigenous people they seek to oppress. It is a slow and gradual process in Mārama, and as cathartic and energizing for Mary, Stappard makes very clear that the damage done to the Māori people but must be acknowledged, debated, and repaired where possible. In Mārama, titled after Mary’s Māori name, Mary is recruited by Nathanial Cole (Black Sails and Lost in Space’s Toby Stephens), the owner of a North Yorkshire manor, to serve as the governess of his pre-teen daughter, Anne (Evelyn Towersey). Mary is not interested in the position, but she takes it based on her immediate and profound affinity for Anne. However, she remains unsettled by Nathanial’s obsession with Māori culture. This is exemplified at its most horrifying by the presence of a “wharenui”—a meeting house of the Māori people—on Nathanial’s property. Stappard employs the wharenui as a haunting literal and metaphoric symbol of the British plundering of the Māori people during the colonial era. To Mary, it stands as a stark reminder of the harm and devastation done to her ancestors by greedy, callous colonizers. But it is a place that empowers Mary, and along with various influences that should not be spoiled, allows her not just to discover the truth about her ancestors but to become connected to her cultural heritage. It is at this point that Mary reclaims her Māori name Mārama and locks horns with the controlling and scheming Nathanial, with Anne caught in the middle. Nathanial obviously represents a colonizer’s mindset, that the supposedly smart, sophisticated, and ingenious white man is entitled to impose their will on an indigenous people that view as inferior and in need of saving from themselves. Nathanial is actually the worse kind of colonizer: he shows no mercy toward the Māori but views it as his duty to preserve the Māori cultural heritage for reasons that are slowly revealed throughout the course of Mārama. Toby Stephens brings a beguiling persuasiveness to Nathanial that gradually strains to conceal his dark history and sinister motives. Even Nathanial’s attempt to “honor” his guest and her Māori heritage, during a party attended by many of the local dignitaries, turns into an insulting farce fueled by an overwhelming sense of superiority and a blatant disregard for those forced to live under British rule. Taratoa Stappard stages the grim and profound proceedings in a gloomy and forbidding manor, a symbol of new British wealth earned from cruel and exploitative endeavors. But the ominous half-lit rooms and corridor—imbued with disturbing secrets—stands in contrast to the wharenui, which gradually comes to serve as a beacon of hope and a restorative connection to the past for Mary despite the horrific truths she learns within its walls. Aired: May 13, 2026. Web sites: https://maramafilm.com/ https://darkskyfilms.com/film/marama/ |
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