Hunt for the Wilderpeople - Montage

Written and directed by Taika Waititi

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, a stupendous and funny film that I had the pleasure to re-visit recently, when on my journey for an interesting montage.

Here's a quick summary of the film so that we are all up to speed. Spoilers ahead.
I will be getting down to the main storyline, and skipping parts so that we can get right into the montage I'd like to focus on. I'd highly recommend this film and if you want the full experience, read the book it's based on "Wild Pork and Watercress" - by Barry Crump.


The main protagonist - Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) - 15-year-old over-weight city kid, in the adoption system.
Second protagonist  - Hec (Sam Neill) - middle-aged+ outdoors/huntsman who has led a solitary existence most of his life.
Together through some funny and serious circumstances, they find themselves helping each other outmanoeuvre the search teams looking for them, in the New Zealand wilderness, growing and learning together.

Onto the Montage in question, here's a link 
https://youtu.be/ztYy4RWRH2c?t=17  

One of the reasons this montage grabbed my attention is that it seems to be one continuous shot if you study the scene/s you see that some of the time the characters have their faces obscured (obvious body doubles), then un-obscured in the next pan of the camera/scene, also they do 2 full rotations starting at this campfire (above), the second time around it's been quickly extinguished and the people hunting for the main characters are examining the ashes. Such a simple yet beautiful way of showing this passage of time, also it's extremely time-efficient for filming, but must have taken a lot of organisation. I guess they must have been extremely happy when they pulled this long take off.

The type of montage I would call this would actually be a mix of two, rhythmic and tonal.
Rhythmic as the scene is played out more or less chronologically and shows a fairly clear passage of time, albeit not an exact one. the main indication of this would be the fire lit, then extinguished later. Also, the character mainly moves from left of shot to right, the same direction of the camera panning.

Tonal, as we see the camera pan slowly, this plays into the season, winter, a slow, methodical and cold season, that also reflects the main characters travelling speed, as Hec has leg problems and is an older man, along with Ricky, who is overweight. Cold/slow & methodical is also in conjunction with the 3 groups hunting the main characters, the first being the child welfare worker, Paula Hall (Rachel House) who has shown little in the way of warmth or emotion towards anything in the film, especially Ricky. Second would be the small group of hunters who have an ugly altercation with our main characters earlier in the film, and who are after them for (probably) revenge and the reward money (cold motivation). Thirdly the Police, who are mainly seen in black, almost SWAT looking uniforms, with their faces covered in their gear, telling us that they only have one function in the film, that's to be an unyielding and uncaring arm of the law, coming to find our main characters.

Also, the beautifully haunting music taking over all the audio in this montage - https://youtu.be/hs5hOhI4pEE  - Leonard Cohen - The Partisan. A song about a man who is seemingly running for his life against soldiers who are coming to kill him, he has " lost my wife and children" easily relatable to Hec's actual wife and Dog, but also can tie into our emotions in the film. It seems at the end of the song is linked with death and freedom, as now the montage is clearly near the end of the film and the story is nearing its end, almost preluding to what may come. A perfect choice for this part of the film and definitely sets the tone.

I learned a lot for thinking about how this shot was pulled off, ingenuity, planning, motive, plot progression, characterisation, music and more. Waititi is one of my favourite writer/directors, he takes risks and seems to work extremely hard to pull off his stories/films, he has an ingenious sense of how humanity is shown, in its humour and realism. I hope to one day work with such a fantastic storyteller.