REVIEWS

BOSTON PHOENIX REVIEW
Reviewed by Gerald Peary.

This inspired mockumentary comes to us courtesy of New Zealand director Peter Jackson (Heavenly Creatures). Appearing on camera a beerhall-bellied Jackson immodestly claims to have discovered the missing works of a New Zealand silent-film director who rivals America's champ, D.W. Griffith, for his astounding artistic output. We're talking the amazing Kiwi auteur Colin McKenzie.

The movie is filled up with straight-faced pseudo-interviews with stolid New Zealanders tracing McKenzie's nonpareil career, in which he discovered sound and color long before their time. There are also pseudo-testaments to McKenzie's international stature, including talking-heads words from movie historian Leonard Maltin and Miramax Films boss Harvey Weinstein. Forgotten Silver climaxes on Jackson's H. Rider Haggard-like trip into the New Zealand deep to uncover the lost cine-city constructed by McKenzie for his silent masterpiece, New Zealand's bombastic answer to Griffith's Intolerance. It's Heart of Darkness lite.