Alex Casey investigates the powerful resurgence of a Crowded House hit in cinemas this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The most patriotic I have felt in a long time was during one of the occupation scenes in Pike River. Anna Osborne and Sonya Rockhouse, played by Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm, are leading the protest against concreting trucks coming to seal the mine. Setting up \u201cCamp Pikelet\u201d at the Pike River gates, a montage shows the women perched on camp chairs and wrapped in wool blankets, sharing plates of biscuits and laughing along with the community supporting their fight against corporate greed and negligence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As if this vision of Aotearoa isn\u2019t moving enough, then comes the hammer. It begins with that unmistakable melancholy strum, then the syncopated backbeat, then the flurry of drums. \u201cThere is freedom within, there is freedom without,\u201d Neil Finn starts to croon, as audience members reach to catch their own deluge of tears in the nearest paper cup.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Melanie Lynskey and Robyn Malcolm in Pike River. Image: Matt Grace<\/p>\n
\u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 by Crowded House is having a real moment in local cinemas this year. Beyond Pike River, you might have also heard it played on an outdoor piano in Tin\u0101, as teacher Mareta (Anapela Polataivao) joins her student Sophie (Antonie Robinson) in an impromptu duet. Or perhaps you remember it as the emotional climax of Prime Minister. Jacinda Ardern blinks back tears while talking about her yearning to return home, before Finn comes off the top ropes once more beneath soaring scenic shots of Aotearoa\u2019s mountains, lakes and forests.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, this is far from the first time \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 has made a splash in film and television. Just two years after its release in 1986, the song appeared in a climactic scene in Miami Vice<\/a>, where a permed Caitlin Davies-Crockett (Sheena Easton) makes an emotional goodbye to her mulleted man-friend. Since then it has made dozens of appearances in everything from Love Island to The Leftovers, The Simpsons to The Americans<\/a>. It\u2019s also been covered by everyone from Ariana Grande<\/a> to Stan Walker<\/a>, to the entire cast of Glee<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite its ubiquity overseas, \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 was a slower burn closer to home. \u201cIt is an interesting song because, when it was first released, it became an example of the cultural cringe of the time,\u201d says Gareth Shute, music historian and author of Songs from the Shaky Isles: A Short History of Popular Music in New Zealand. \u201cIt even got on the US top 30 before it got in the New Zealand top 30, which shows how we were too shy to embrace it, like we couldn\u2019t believe that a local song could be good enough to sit alongside overseas ones on the radio.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The song, which Neil Finn wrote in one day on his brother\u2019s piano while \u201cfeeling a little bit antisocial<\/a>\u201d, eventually made it to number one in Aotearoa in April 1987 and has only gained cultural momentum since. In 2001, it was ranked second on APRA\u2019s list of the Top 100 New Zealand songs of all time (behind \u2018Nature\u2019 by The Fourmyula). \u2018Definitely in the 20 or so years since, there\u2019s no way that \u2018Nature\u2019 would be up there anymore,\u201d says Shute. \u201cThese days, I think \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 would easily win that vote.\u201d<\/p>\n With it\u2019s recognisable \u201cjingajik\u201d or \u201cM\u0101ori strum\u201d<\/a> heard at any sing-a-long in Aotearoa, \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 also has deeply emotive lyrics that are just vague enough to resonate with a range of situations. Pike River director Robert Sarkies says the lyrics played a part in selecting the song for the film. \u201cIt seemed to speak directly to our story of friendship and an epic battle for accountability \u2013 \u2018there\u2019s a battle ahead, many battles are lost but you\u2019ll never see the end of the road while you\u2019re travelling with me\u2019,\u201d he tells The Spinoff. \u201cI can\u2019t think of a more relevant lyric.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarkies wasn\u2019t aware of the 2025 \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 deluge until he saw Tin\u0101 and Prime Minister in cinemas, just like everyone else. \u201cDirectors edit films in isolation, sitting in darkened edit suites piecing together our individual jigsaws,\u201d he explains. \u201cOr, in my case, playing a lot of music against images to see what fits.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Miki Magasiva, director of Tin\u0101, also said he experimented with a few different New Zealand songs for the moment his two main characters meet at the piano for the first time. \u201cIt really had to be a strong song that navigated, or could exist in, the lives of both these characters \u2013 a young student and an older teacher,\u201d he says. \u201c\u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 is one of those songs that has stood the test of time and continues to resonate with people who were around when it was released, as well as younger people who are discovering it years later.\u201d<\/p>\n The song didn\u2019t just make contextual sense for the characters \u2013 the lyrics also connected with the plot, as in Pike River. \u201cThe words have always spoken of someone who is struggling to discover themselves and their place in this complex world we live in, but there is always hope in navigating that,\u201d says Magasiva. \u201cBoth of our characters are going through hardship; they both feel lost, trying to overcome something massive in their lives. But they\u2019re also both musicians, and this song helps them connect without a word being spoken to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n Rounding out the trifecta is Prime Minister, directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsay Utz, who explain that the song captures Ardern\u2019s bittersweet journey. \u201cWe wanted the final note to hold both the ache of what\u2019s gone and the hope that still endures. For us, the song holds a similar tension \u2013 the melancholy of division intertwined with optimism.\u201d And while they experimented with a few options, the choice was clear. \u201cThe track is both a reminder and a rallying cry \u2013 even when the world feels fractured, we can still dream of a future with humanity and empathy at its core.\u201d<\/p>\n Whatever the motivation behind \u2018Don\u2019t Dream It\u2019s Over\u2019 becoming a local film favourite this year, Shute says there is little risk of the song ever feeling overplayed at this point. \u201cYou would have thought it would have been killed in the 90s, because 80s popstar Paul Young did quite a cheesy cover of it<\/a>, and so did Sixpence None the Richer<\/a> \u2013 that\u2019s two pretty good attempts to try and ruin a song,\u201d he says. \u201cBut you go back and listen to the original production, it\u2019s just the perfect version that also still sounds current enough to put in a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n And although it has already appeared in the three biggest local films of the year, we\u2019ve still got two months left of 2025. Could there be room for one more spin of the song in cinemas?\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHey now,\u201d says Shute. \u201cDon\u2019t dream it\u2019s over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Casey investigates the powerful resurgence of a Crowded House hit in cinemas this year.\u00a0 The most patriotic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[86299,492,86300,156,48715,86301,111,139,69,73268,73269,1066,9683,13015],"class_list":{"0":"post-123479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-aotearoa-film","9":"tag-comments-enabled","10":"tag-crowded-house","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jacinda-ardern","13":"tag-neil-finn","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-nz-film","18":"tag-pike-river","19":"tag-pop-culture","20":"tag-prime-minister","21":"tag-tina"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}