Jacinda Ardern is nothing if not prepared for a bumpy ride. Just as well, because that’s what she’s getting in the United Kingdom right now, as the documentary about her pandemic-plagued years in power hits cinemas there.
Directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, Prime Minister combines sit-down interviews and news clippings with footage shot by her husband Clarke Gayford.
Clips from her appearance on The Graham Norton show slid into social media feeds over the weekend showing Ardern, sandwiched between actor Kate Winslet and comedian Seth Meyers on the programmes’ famous red couch, talking about auditioning to be a hobbit. The crowd, as comedy talk shows are wont to do, giggled on cue, as did the other guests.
This prompted New Zealanders to hit the comments to profess their ongoing loyalty for Ardern or rage that everyone at home hated her and other countries looked stupid for still fawning over her. An even split from both camps referred to her as “Jacinta”.
What the feeds seemed to show far less (likely because social algorithms now favour video over links off to text websites now) was that the British newspapers were ripping the film to shreds. Well, some were. Film reviewers, as film reviewers are wont to do, disagreed on whether Prime Minister was a “shameless act of self-promotion”, a 4-star insight into a “smart and personable” leader or many things in between.
‘Shameless act of self-promotion’
The Telegraph gave the film two stars and a lot of shade: “Most of the footage is seemingly shot by her partner, Clarke Gayford, and the result feels less like a political documentary and more like stumbling across somebody’s unguarded home videos and realising, with horror, that they want you to watch all of them,” writes critic Kara Kennedy.
Kennedy did, however, praise the striking scenes spanning the first few months after Ardern’s gave birth to daughter Neve, and says watching her try to breastfeed while governing a nation was wrenching.
A right-leaning publication, called The Torygraph by some, criticises the documentary for myth-making revisionist tendencies that build on the idea that “New Zealand didn’t deserve her”.
‘Feels like a retrospective campaign ad’
The Financial Times gave Prime Minister three stars and decided that although it was a “reasonably revealing” glossy production, it often felt like a campaign ad.
Still, critic Jonathan Romney says the film had the candour to show not only Ardern’s achievements but the unravelling of her popularity.
‘An actual member of the human race’
The Guardian’s take on ‘Prime Minister’ was glowing, but it was hard to tell if critic Peter Bradshaw was taken with the film or just “the smart and personable” Ardern.
He writes, for the left-leaning publication, that Ardern is “an actual member of the human race” and says though she was the target of misogyny, she “never seems hardened, embittered or even changed all that much”.
Bradshaw puts her fall from popularity down to a country “succumbing to the delicious thrill of bullying a woman”.
Tumbleweeds
The Murdoch newspaper The Times ignored the film.
