The 1 minute, 40 seconds of score that plays until “Mihi” cuts to black is available here: https://soundcloud.com/laurenkingproductions/waru-mihi-neighbourly-deed?in=laurenkingproductions/sets/waru-original-soundtrack-score. The emotional electronic composition (by Lauren King) gradually fades in at the background of the sequence’s turning point, when Mihi’s neighbor offers much needed assistance (thereby overturning Mihi’s interpretation of her interest as judgmental).

The Waru score and sky imagery correspond with aspects of Waru’s opening and closing, thereby connecting Shot 3’s conclusion to the position on domestic violence advanced by the anthology as a whole. Just after the Waru title card and before the opening of Shot 1: “Charm,” Waru states via voiceover narration, “When I died, I saw the whole world.” Waru repeats the line at the start of the final sequence, Shot 8: “Titty and Bash,” this time with additional text, including, “I see the people in their houses . . . When I died, I was flying” (this line whispered). This line resonates with Mihi’s finale, connecting the score’s presence and camera’s drift upward, away from Mihi’s troubles and into an aerial view, with Waru, the child victim of domestic abuse. In “Titty and Bash,” which ends with two sisters interrupting a scene of domestic violence to liberate their young whānau, Waru whispers, “I see the people.” I read this line as reassurance that even if Mihi and the other Waru protagonists feel invisible, they are nonetheless seen; a non-judgmental and compassionate gaze encompasses and connects their struggling community. According to Waru’s complex ethical vision, victims of domestic violence, like Waru, and those dangerously on the edge of enacting such violence, like Mihi and Em, are empathically linked.

Thus while “Mihi” and “Em” are feminist in the compassion towards socially disadvantaged mothers that they model and in their endorsement of efforts to understand rather than demonize them, Gardiner and Wolfe advocate specifically for Māori women, insisting that these mothers suffer from systemic racism in addition to sexism. Waru’s most explicit confrontation with systemic racism occurs in Shot 6, “Kiritapu,” which features a Māori woman working in the media who is isolated from her Pākeha[20] colleagues and subjected to constant demands to explain the overrepresentation of Māori in child abuse cases. In the most dramatic instance of workplace racism depicted in the sequence, a female colleague casually poses the rhetorical question, “Hey Kiri, why do Māori keep having babies if they just kill them, I mean, what the fuck?” The silently seething Kiri erupts in the shot’s finale during a live broadcast, proclaiming that child abuse in New Zealand is “everyone’s problem,” not Māori’s alone (Figure 29). In fact, Waru precisely pinpoints social isolation and condemnation as principal causes of tragedies like Waru’s death. 

Cheryl Suzack describes Indigenous feminism as follows:

“It focuses on the intersections between colonialism and patriarchy to examine how race and gender systems overlap to create conditions in which Indigenous women are subjected to forms of social disempowerment that arise out of historical and contemporary practices of colonialism, racism, sexism, and patriarchy leading to social patterns of 'discrimination within discrimination' (Kirkness, 1987–1988, p. 13) that disproportionately affect Indigenous women” (261).[21] [open endnotes in new window]

In an interview with Women and Hollywood, Gardiner explained the response she hoped “Mihi” would incite in viewers:

“It was important to me to ask people to be honest about their own struggles as a way to understand the issues surrounding child abuse more compassionately. I wanted them to identify with Mihi (played by Ngapaki Moetara) and understand how we are only ever on a knife edge with our own humanity: the ability to make really bad choices is within all of us. Then imagine if you’ve never been taught how to make good choices, or you’re stuck in a cycle of poverty, or abuse, or generations of abuse, or loss of culture — [imagination is] the beginning of understanding, I think. And it’s where the conversation about child abuse needs to start. First with comprehension and understanding, then with compassion, then with solutions.”[22]

Waru’s imaginative and collaborative framework allows for a range of portraits that illustrate the intersectional challenges disadvantaging contemporary Māori women, with particular attention placed on the co-productive dynamic between systemic poverty, addiction and abuse.

The aims Gardiner articulates are relevant to the entire anthology yet resonate most strikingly with “Em,” placed directly after “Mihi” in the series of long takes. Deborah Young’s review suggests thematic overlaps between the two sequential sequences:

“Ainsely Gardiner’s [is a] wrenching account of a single mother [Mihi] who hasn’t enough money to buy gas for her car or food for her kids. A complementary piece on motherhood is Katie Wolfe’s about a hip young singer [Em] who comes home at dawn, falling down drunk, and discovers her baby has been locked in the house, alone.”[23]

Prior to directing “Em,” Wolfe had worked steadily in film and television since the early 1990s, and had directed two award-winning shorts, This is Her (2008) and Redemption (2010), both of which screened at Sundance Film Festival (among many others) and the latter won an imagineNATIVE jury prize.[24] Wolfe found the long take constraint stimulating, and was the only Waru director who approached the long take as a lengthy, near-silent action shot.

“For me, the writing process was dictated by the one-shot, I don’t think everyone worked that way . . . I remember the feeling of adrenalin before each take –there was so much set up and so much that could go wrong.”[25]

At the start of Shot 4, Em is about to be dropped home in the morning after a night out. The car-full of young people she is in exuberantly sing, and a comment from the driver to Em (seated in the passenger seat) refers to her participation in a successful performance. Em, extremely intoxicated, sings along loudly to the radio (Figure 30), though she sobers up slightly when they arrive at her house, where she strongly discourages the driver from pulling into the driveway. She also rejects his offer of help when she struggles to exit the car (Figure 31). After the car pulls away – Em yelling, “I love you, fellas,” slurring her words – a difficult journey up the driveway to the front porch ensues.

For nearly a minute of screen time, Em staggers, falls (Figure 32), and eventually drags herself onto the front porch. Then, a dramatic shift occurs when she realizes that she is locked out of the house (Figure 33) and her baby is inside alone.

32. Unsteady, Em props herself against the fence to drag her body towards the house, but she falls, ending up face down on the grass clutching the beer bottle she had taken ‘for the road.’ This is the first of Em’s three major falls in the sequence (although she stumbles consistently throughout, she falls flat on only three occasions).	33: Em frantically tests door and window locks, the camera tracking her efforts and keeping her framed in medium-long, medium, and medium close-up. The sequence consistently emphasizes a hard boundary between inside and outside the house, with many compositions featuring glass to demonstrate that transparency doesn’t equal access.

These sobering facts gain her some clarity, and she spends the next several minutes desperately trying to get into the house: banging on windows (Figure 34) and checking locks; unsteadily climbing a ladder to reach a window and falling; pulling a sharp branch out of her leg after the fall (Figure 35), then hobbling towards the back porch; and frantically upending (one by one) a massive pile of shoes (Figure 36) in search of the spare key. When she finds it, she lets out a triumphant gasp before eagerly unlocking the back door (Figure 37).

34: In one of only several close-up framings of Em, she climbs a ladder and still strains to see into the window. Her head takes up only a small fraction of the image, the rest dominated by the window’s hazy reflection. From here, she falls out of frame with a clatter.	35. After hitting the ground hard, Em struggles to a seat before steeling herself to remove the stick now painfully lodged in her leg. During the 10-minute take, Em is constantly in action except when momentarily incapacitated, as after this fall, and her expressions convey an impressive range of intense feelings (agony, in this instance). The mise-en-scéne establishes a chaotic domestic environment, inside and outside the house.
36: Multiple piles of shoes dominate the production design of the back porch. These augment the drama of Em’s strenuous efforts to gain entrance to the house. She is a dark blur of activity at the center of this image .	37: The camera closes in on Em as she clumsily inserts the key. The darkness of her hair and jacket blends into the door in this image, creating a split composition of light and dark.

During Em’s exterior search for a way into the house, Waru is visible through a window on a news broadcast (Figure 1). Em also passes the smoking remnants of a backyard fire, which indicates that a social gathering of some kind only recently concluded (Figure 38). In addition, she lapses into a drunken reverie (Figure 39), which is audibly punctuated by a piercing electronic sound effect; she nearly falls asleep (Figure 40), but wakes with a jolt, immediately panic-stricken at the sound of her inaccessible baby’s crying (the diegetic sound resumes, replacing the non-diegetic sound effect, with a jagged cut).

1: Several minutes into Shot 4, ‘Em,’ Waru appears in the background of the image while Em desperately tries to break into her house where her baby has been left alone.	38: On her way to test the back door, Em passes the scattered evidence of a social gathering only recently suspended. ‘What the fuck!’ she mutters in disbelief. Minimal exposition in the sequence provides little context for Em’s discovery of her baby alone and locked in the house, though Em’s ignorance of the circumstances is clear.
39: While Em looks for a way into the house, her concentration lapses, and she slumps over the porch fence, laughing at something viewers aren’t privy to and seeming to forget her immediate goals.	40. The image of Em's reverie is high contrast black and white (in equal measure). A non-diegetic piercing sound accentuates her lapse from reverie into stupor.

Three kindred compositions stand out in “Em’: in each, Em peers into the house from outside, a neglected child visible in the interior. In the first case, Waru appears on the television (Figure 1). In the second, Em, precariously balanced on the ladder, catches sight of her baby swaddled in blankets on the kitchen floor (Figure 41) and coos, “Momma’s coming,” before falling out of frame with a crash (the camera tilting slowly down in the wake of Em’s fall to catch her sprawled in the grass, nauseous and in pain, Figure 42).

41: The reflection of the cluttered backyard merges with the similarly cluttered kitchen, the baby nestled in the juncture of the kitchen cabinets at the bottom of frame (center). Em’s shadow on the window outlines the baby, part of Em’s head out of focus at the bottom of the frame (right).	42: The shallow focus composition highlights Em’s agonized expression against a blurred backdrop.

And in Shot 4’s final (and most remarkable) composition, Em has purposefully positioned herself outside the house and the baby inside, just on the other side of the glass from where Em lays herself down to sober up (Figure 43). The visual symmetry of these three compositions communicates their significance; they stress Waru’s and the baby’s vulnerabilities inside the home, while Em’s position outside looking in (first unintentionally, then on purpose) conveys ambivalence in her capability as a caretaker. Though Em clearly loves her baby, her alcohol consumption poses a threat. Just before lying down outside across from her baby, Em picks up the beer bottle she had carried from the car and breaks it (Figure 44).

43: The film’s most striking image positions Em in the background, visible through the glass and ineffectually reaching for her baby in the foreground, closer to the camera and swaddled in light colors that contrast Em’s dark hair, eyes and clothes	44: Only Em’s lower half and (blurred) hand are visible as she picks up her beer bottle and smashes it in a rage.

While the multiple layers of the three “through the window” shots and the final composition’s special poignance stand out in the sequence, a second trio of images complements them—in these, Em falls flat, wholly incapacitated. On the first occasion (Figure 32), Em collapses just after exiting the car. The second and third instances are rendered with more drama, the second due to the ironic juxtaposition of Em falling out of frame while cooing “Momma’s coming” (with the camera’s pause before pursuing Em down to the ground enhancing the tension between Em’s desire to go to her baby’s aid and her inability to do so). The third instance occurs after Em has managed to unlock the door and pick up her baby. She nearly passes out (for the second time in the sequence) while cradling her baby on the floor and leaning against the refrigerator. After managing, with considerable effort, to get herself and the baby upright (Figure 45), Em staggers several times before slamming into the wall and falling flat on the floor, eventually appearing upside down in the frame (Figure 46) in a rare close-up (most of the sequence frames Em in medium and medium-long shots to accommodate the emphasis on her constant movements).    

45: Em uses one hand braced against the kitchen counter to pull herself (holding the baby) upright. For a brief instant, Em appears steady on her feet, and she and the baby are central in a balanced composition.	46: This striking composition appears near the end of the sequence (and functions as a sort of climax). The tight close-up frames Em completely upside down, the beauty of her face and hair (accentuated by the high contrast) jarring in the context of her violent fall with the baby in hand.

Writing for the British Film Institute (in the November 1999 issue), Janet Bergstrom comments on Akerman’s groundbreaking and “personal way of screening women,” in the process quoting Akerman on her approach to representing “the mother’s gestures.” Akerman said,

“I was looking with a great deal of attention and the attention wasn’t distanced… For me, the way I looked at what was going on was a look of love and respect… I let her live her life in the middle of the frame… I let her be in her space.”[27]

The compositions in “Em” illustrate the approach Akerman describes, and the space, attention and respect it entails. 42 years separate the releases of Jeanne Dielman and Waru. However, harsh social judgments levied against mothers are not less common now than then; in fact, a growing body of literature suggests that high social media usage intensifies mothers' feelings of inadequacy and awareness of social judgment, negatively impacting their mental health.[28] Asked to comment on planning and making “Em,” Wolfe singled out the final composition (Figure 43) as “a really strong image” in her conception of the “mini-action film”:

“I had written it that the camera was behind Em looking at Karena, the baby. On the day, the DOP (director of photography) flipped the shot and put Karena in the foreground, [and] it was so much better.”[29]

The camera lingers on this composition for the final moments of “Em,” while the Waru score resumes for the first time in the take (and plays for 31 seconds until Shot 4 cuts to black: https://soundcloud.com/laurenkingproductions/waru-em-no-more?in=laurenkingproductions/sets/waru-original-soundtrack-score). Had this image proceeded as Wolfe originally intended, it would have reiterated the pattern of the other multi-layered window compositions (Figures 1 and 41), that is, privileging Em’s perspective (the view over her shoulder) and placing the child at a distance. The spontaneous inversion here is impactful because it suddenly shifts the focus from Em’s perspective and actions, which the 10-minute take had favored until this point. Furthermore, the non-diegetic score’s audibility while Em sobs blocks the diegetic sound from this side of the glass. The apparently content baby is now between viewers and Em—a bold composition that reinforces Waru’s view that care for children is the responsibility of the entire community (and nation). 

The integration of the score intensifies the empathy for Em already evoked by every aspect of the sequence’s camerawork and mise-en-scéne. The high-contrast imagery, which lights up Awhina Rose Ashby’s face so that it appears to glow, and the unconventional framing (in particular, in Figures 43 and 46) enhance the passionate and committed performance Ashby delivers as Em. Em’s story, which was, according to Wolfe, based on a book by “a mother whose children have been killed,” recalls Charm’s struggle (in Waru: Shot 1) not to blame Waru’s young mother for his death. In Waru, “Mihi” and “Em” most directly confront the difficult circumstances of struggling mothers who are socially disadvantaged and lack sufficient support; in addition, their neatly inverted scenarios—Mihi unable to leave home, and Em barred from getting in—communicate the ambivalence of domestic space for struggling mothers. Their long takes reorient viewers in the hope of, on one hand, inspiring fresh vantages on mothers like “Mihi” and “Em,” and on the other, undermining dominant racist and sexist ideologies that unjustly place blame on women like them for cycles of poverty, addiction, and abuse that are (as Waru: Shot 6’s Kiri insists) “everyone’s problem.”