In the pantheon of world rugby, one player reigns supreme: Jonah Lomu.
Jonah Lomu – during the National Anthem. New Zealand All Blacks v Italy. International rugby union test match. Stadio Renato Dall’ara, Bologna, Italy. Saturday, 28 October 1995. © Copyright Photo: Andrew Cornaga / www.photosport.nz
The hulking 6’5”, 125-kilogram winger was undoubtedly rugby’s first global superstar, a player whose extraordinary combination of size, speed and athleticism helped propel both the game and New Zealand rugby into the professional era. With 63 caps and 37 international tries to his name, Lomu was a remarkable presence on the field; a force of nature who captured the imagination of fans around the world.
But Lomu’s story extended far beyond rugby.
His extraordinary courage in battling a rare kidney disease, which ultimately curtailed his professional career and tragically, in 2015, claimed his life at just 40 years of age, became another defining chapter in his remarkable story. New Zealand and the rugby world mourned one of sport’s most extraordinary talents.
Now, more than a decade after his passing, the documentary LOMU brings his story back into focus. Directed by renowned Irish documentary filmmaker Gavin Fitzgerald, whose previous work has explored figures including Conor McGregor and Oasis’s Liam Gallagher, the film sees Fitzgerald return to his first love, rugby, while attempting to look beyond the myth of Jonah Lomu and understand the man himself.
Following a celebrated debut at this year’s New Zealand International Film Festival, LOMU is now in cinemas across the country, and LawNews was fortunate enough to sit down with Fitzgerald to discuss the making of the film, Lomu’s legacy and the complicated identity of a man who became a global sporting icon.
Beyond the rugby player
Fitzgerald was determined that LOMU would be more than a conventional sporting biography. Lomu’s story offered an opportunity to explore something much deeper.
“I think with Jonah’s story it’s much more than a sports story – it’s something that can bring a real positive impact on the world, and to get people to reframe things,” Fitzgerald says. “I always felt there was something bigger to tell here with Jonah’s story, and for me, I was just a big fan, but looking at him closer, I saw a vulnerability that he had behind his eyes, and as a filmmaker, I wanted to set out to try and understand that.”
It’s that vulnerability that gives LOMU much of its emotional weight. Rather than simply celebrating the sporting phenomenon, Fitzgerald sets out to understand the person underneath the legend.
A question of identity
One of the film’s persistent themes is identity. Throughout LOMU, Lomu is seen negotiating the competing forces of his Tongan heritage and his identity as a New Zealander; two parts of himself that were not always easily reconciled.
For Fitzgerald, exploring Lomu’s Tongan heritage was essential to understanding the man he became.
“The theme of identity was definitely a key theme that we kept going back to. And it’s complex, not just with the islands, but also with the immigrant community and their history in New Zealand,” Fitzgerald says.
“The more Tongan people we spoke to, the more the story opened up. To understand Jonah fully, I had to understand his Tongan upbringing, and, how it was sometimes in conflict with him being the rugby player he wanted to be.”
That conflict is perhaps most clearly illustrated through the contrast between Lomu and another legendary Pacific Island-born All Black.
“Michael Jones never played rugby on a Sunday, and stuck to that tradition. Whereas Jonah was carving out his own identity; he wanted to play rugby, he wanted to win, and I sort of felt that he wanted to be Tongan, but he was also a New Zealander and wanted to do things his way.”
It’s a distinction that adds considerable depth to Lomu’s story. He was not simply navigating the pressures of professional sport; he was also navigating questions of culture, belonging and the expectations placed upon him.
Finding Jonah in the archive
To construct that portrait, Fitzgerald brings together interviews with Lomu’s family, including his mother, Hepi Lomu, alongside major rugby figures from the early professional era, including former All Black coach John Hart and legendary All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick.
But it was the archival material that presented one of the film’s greatest challenges.
“I think firstly, there wasn’t as much archival footage as you’d expect, because of that rugby era in the 1990s. It’s only at the start of the professional era, and you didn’t really get cameras back then, and especially not in the changing rooms, or just with the mobile technology and scope of coverage that we have now. So it was challenging to get everything together.”
Eventually, however, Fitzgerald and his team struck archival gold; with some of their best footage found within Lomu’s own family archive.
For Fitzgerald, the early footage offered something particularly valuable: an unguarded Jonah.
“There were a lot more interviews in his mature years, and when you watch that stuff he sounds a lot different; he’s a lot more branded and maybe safer as an interview subject. I really tried to lean into those early years, as he was just becoming an All Black, as I felt there was something there that was just a bit more true to himself.”
The tragedy of what might have been
At the heart of LOMU is the extraordinary contrast between Lomu’s professional triumphs and the devastating impact of his kidney disease.
The film’s chronology makes that contrast particularly affecting. Watching the timeline of Lomu’s life unfold, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore just how much more there might have been for a player who died at 40.
“There’s a point where, y’know, he’s basically dropped from the All Blacks and the New Zealand Rugby Union offer him a contract worthy of his seniority, and he’s like only 29. He could have played four or five World Cups. It’s just terrible.”
“It is a sad story. I mean, we talk about the potential he had. It’s crazy how complicated and how many chapters there were in his life for a guy who sadly passed away at 40.”
It is perhaps the cruelest aspect of Lomu’s story: for all the records he broke and barriers he shattered, his career ultimately feels like a glimpse of what might have been.
A rugby fan gets to relive Jonah
For Fitzgerald, making LOMU also offered the opportunity to revisit some of his own earliest memories of rugby and the player who helped define it.
“The 1995 World Cup is probably my first sporting memory, because there was a big party in my house, and everyone was watching it, and they were all talking about Jonah.”
1995. Rugby Union, All Blacks
Jonah Lomu – NZL
Please credit: Photosport
“I definitely remember the final and all the buzz around it, and I was immediately amazed by this superhuman player. There’s never been a tournament like it in terms of an individual player just dominating like that.”
Then came France 1999.
“And then there’s ’99, and I remember that clearly, just watching it, and rooting for the guy to win, and then it all happens with the French. But I remember wanting Jonah to win, for the All Blacks to win, because he so deserved that World Cup.”
There’s something revealing in Fitzgerald’s recollection. For millions of fans around the world, Jonah Lomu was not simply an athlete they watched, he was someone they wanted to see succeed.
Who does Jonah belong to?
Ultimately, Fitzgerald hopes LOMU leaves audiences with questions rather than simply answers.
For him, Jonah’s story is open to interpretation, and that ambiguity is part of what makes the documentary so compelling.
“We tried to make a film so that people come away from it with different feelings and passions, and we wanted to leave some questions open. And one of those questions was: who does he really belong to? And I think that’s a lovely question.”
It’s a question that sits at the very heart of Jonah Lomu’s legacy.
“You’re asked to think more deeply about him, and where he comes from, and what it means to belong, and then you’re drawn in by all the sporting stuff as well, so there’s a lot to paint a picture of Jonah as both a rugby player and his life as a man.”
And perhaps that’s the best way to remember Lomu.
Not simply as the giant winger who bulldozed his way through the world’s best defenders, or the superstar who helped transform rugby into a global professional sport, but as a man whose story was ultimately far more complicated, and far more human, than the legend that grew around him.
LOMU is in cinemas now.
Images: MadMan Films
0 Comments