Comment: Sam Neill made an impression on me the first time I saw him. I was speaking at an anti-racism rally in Cathedral Square just over 20 years ago, and he had just simply turned up. Turning up when you are a well-known figure means a lot, and his presence on that occasion did just that and has stayed with me over the years.
I regret not meeting him then, but that would have required me to speak to him, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. Despite being an MP at the time, deep down I was and still am a shy person and, well, he was Sam Neill after all.
He had joined the rally because it was something he believed in. We spoke about it when I finally summoned the courage to say hello some 14 years later at an event in Auckland where he had led former US President Barack Obama in a fascinating interview. I knew he had been nervous about the interview beforehand, having tweeted that the cold sweat thing was just him all the time.
When we talked, he seemed a little anxious about how he had done, not because of himself, but for want of doing justice to interviewing President Obama. Even with all his experience in the public eye, this is something he wanted to do well. He had nothing to worry about, having done a great job, and it was wonderful to finally meet him.
All the tributes that have poured in about Sam Neill’s humility and character have really resonated. They all describe his authentic self.
When someone dies unexpectedly, it is not unusual to reflect on their take on the world. This led me to watch Cinema of Unease, a personal journey by Sam Neill presenting New Zealand’s film-making industry. This was released in 1995 as the New Zealand contribution to the British Film Institute’s Century of Cinema series.
The opening shows a quote from Charles Brasch, the founding editor of Landfall, stating that a nation comes of age when it begins to live in the light of an imaginative order of its own. This is the journey that Sam Neill walks us through from a personal and societal perspective, and I am clearly not the only person who has watched it in the wake of the news of his death.
He describes his love of film from an early age describing the cinemas I grew up with in Christchurch, clustered as many were around Cathedral Square, and the movies that were screened onto a sheet at weekends at Christ’s College where he was a boarder.
Reflecting on this years later, it seemed amazing to him that all the heroes had foreign accents and that all the adventures happened somewhere else in the world. There was no one we recognised and no place we knew on screen. It seemed that our own culture was somehow unworthy.
He traverses some of the films that started to tell a different story, our story, one we were not ashamed to tell. He didn’t dwell on the role he played in this journey, but there is no question it was significant.
At one point he reflects on leaving New Zealand to travel overseas, saying that you leave because it drives you nuts and it’s never going to change, and then when you come back, it’s all the things that have changed that drive you crazy.
Although critical of the changes wrought in the Beehive over the 1980s-90s, excepting our independent foreign policy, anti-nuclear stance, and Māori renaissance, the film ends with the message that we are developing a sense of where we are and who we are. This was 30 years ago, and Sam Neill’s contribution to this story continued to go from strength to strength.
I should also note his contribution to the wine industry not just for the quality of the wine. I know he was exceptionally generous in offering signed bottles of his world-class Two Paddocks Pinot Noir to help fundraising for causes he believed in.
And that brings me back to his commitment to causes. Sam Neill was not afraid to speak out as we have most recently been reminded when it comes to the Government’s proposal to fast track a gold mining application in Central Otago. He used his position to turn up, just as he has always done when it mattered to him.
I found one of his signed wines in my cupboard today, one that I fear is past its best. It will have to simply serve as a memory of a man who turned up, touching the lives of many people, and who will never be forgotten. May he rest in peace.
