4.5/5
Review by John P. Harvey.
Opening the Capital Film Festival, and screening again on Saturday November 1st, ahead of its Australian cinematic release, Prime Minister gives the inside story of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership of the New Zealand Labor Party from 2017 to 2023. Commencing with Ardern’s sudden ascent to the leadership and including her unexpected landslide victory at the polls and her four-year incumbency as leader of the New Zealand Labor party, the film uses a variety of source footage, its mainstay being footage that Ardern’s husband, Clarke Gayford, shot on a portable video camera, and it offers a remarkably personal view of this young prime minister’s unusual career.
The film makes no attempt to cover the real politics at play during Ardern’s period in office. Instead, it focuses on her as a person working at a demanding job, with the major focus being on her life behind the scenes: with her daughter, Neve, in Parliament and in her office; answering questions from Gayford; and simply expressing her feelings during a home life that, leaving aside a lot of reading material, looks like the home life of any other family.
We do also see some of Ardern’s political frustrations, for example, inane Opposition questioning of her fitness as a mother-to-be to fulfill the role of Prime Minister, and sustained public protest at some of her responses to covid-19. We also see some difficult decisions, such as her principled stand against capitulating to U.S. military policies that would endanger New Zealanders, and, later, her decision to resign the prime-ministership due to the public’s increasing disillusionment.
But by and large what the film focuses on are Ardern’s vulnerability and application of her espoused values of kindness and compassion, such as her expressions of empathy for those affected by mass shootings in two Christchurch mosques. Little comes through of Ardern’s political decisions’ bases beyond her call, consistent throughout the film, to place kindness and compassion above divisiveness. What we are treated to instead is a portrait of a human being who assumed a tremendous responsibility along with the joys and burdens of family life and who shouldered that responsibility with grace and fortitude.
By turns funny and very moving, and always intriguing, Prime Minister is worth seeing for its candour in showing the humanity within the office Ardern occupied for six years.