Mangetepopo gorge tragedy TV1 tonight

on demand https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/in-a-flash/episodes/s1-e1

It's had a mixed reaction from some of the families, it seems. https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv-radio/105098711/in-a-flash-film-upsets-family-of-killed-elim-student

Too far into risk and then survival became a gamble ?.

I'm finally watching this tonight and finding it really hard. The whole first half hour seems to be an artificial scene by scene attempt to demonstrate Jodi having a gung-ho incompetent and careless attitude. Was she really that bad? Is it a fair presentation? Edit: Finished. Recurring overvoices asking things like "who do you blame?" when the narrative seemed to make it pretty clear that they blamed Jodi, despite all the fluff at the end. I don't think I'd bother recommending it. I can't place it straight away but it feels like it's artificially dramatising an event which just didn't need dramatising, almost to the level of insulting. Maybe that's just me.

More thoughts: I haven't read the coroner's report on this one but it came across to me as if someone had picked it up and simply decided "let's make a movie of that". As in they just found as many details as possible and tried to crunch them into a script, surrounding it with emotional paraphrasing, and making stuff up in the middle to fill gaps and for dramatic effect. Characters weren't real people. They were shallow cliched perfect people, except for several having an individual character trait which official records probably also described. I really have trouble understanding what someone hopes to achieve in making a film that's not about much else than details of how a group of kids and their teacher died. From the beginning it's known that's going to happen, and for the whole thing you're just sitting there waiting for it to happen. Entertainment? Empathy with this involved? Conveying facts of the event to an audience? Raising awareness about flooding of gorges? Filling a topic slot after winning a contract to make several telemovies for broadcast? Whatever the reason, why is a movie like this a good way to do it? Much more objective info about the events is readily available.

its a problem when you have to try and convey so many characters, like the old "blockbuster movies" that put lots of big stars in the movies, they just end up with a bunch of shallow characters and using their names to draw crowds... it was like a docudrama,

It would have worked better as a documentary film, I think.

the problem is, there is always a certain amount of emotional manipulation being attempted with dramas, for an event like this, it can be pretty difficult to watch, especially if you dont like the way its been done.

Yeah. I'm not too fussed with emotional manipulation if it's done well. I found some of how it came out as cringeworthy but that might be personal taste. I guess in this case I think they just bit off too much for the whole film. It was shown as a series of stuff that happened, with stereotyped characters. It really did look like every character aspect was taken from a statement in a coroner's report, or somewhere similar. Maybe some of those aspects were even exaggerated to try and make some kind of point. A problem with that approach, if it's what it was, is that these types of accident reports would usually only mention character traits if they're considered to have contributed to an accident. It doesn't meant that if you show a character with those specific traits then it'll be anything like the real person. There wasn't any serious exploration into how or why stuff happened, beyond showing a sequence of events that anyone could read in a 5 minute summary. The film seemed to be making some clear accusations about who it thought was responsible for various things, but didn't justify it with anything except the very shallow characters. Jodi, in particular, was just shown as being a completely reckless person. Even IF the specific facts were correct, we didn't get any depth into why she might have been acting like that.