The 'stolen' insider emails of Nicky Hager's best-selling account of National's 2004 election campaign rise again in Alister Barry's (Someone Else's Country) new film.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2008
The Hollow Men 2008
The 'stolen' insider emails that informed Nicky Hager’s best-selling account of National’s 2004 election campaign rise again in Alister Barry’s (Someone Else’s Country) new film – just in time to caution us against campaigning politicians in 2008. Addressing each other like schoolboy Machiavellis, party leader Don Brash and his advisors spelled out how they’d copy the big boys in Australia and the US in order to win the votes of people who’d never support the kind of policies such men are widely presumed to represent. The dividing and conquering began at Orewa. Barry strings the emailed stage-directions through a chronology of public performances as Brash appears nightly on television, dispensing disharmony while espousing honesty, fair play and integrity. There can be fewer more telling images of the spiritual bankruptcy of mid-00s politics than Barry’s footage of the man who intends to be PM evading journalists’ basic questions about his intentions with the dogged, on-message politeness of a Mumbai call centre help desk. — BG