“Once Were Warriors” quotes

Plot – New Zealand. Beth and her family, descendants of a noble Maori family, live in the degraded suburbs of Auckland. Contrary to her parents' wishes, Beth married Jake Heke called “Fury”, descendant of slaves and a brute, violent drunk who treats her like a servant and beats her up. Their eldest son Nig is constantly arguing with his parents and is looking for reasons to join a gang of neighbourhood thugs, who make him undergo a brutal initiation rite. Their eldest daughter Grace, who has a good relationship with her mother but is oppressed by her father, has as her only confident her diary and Toot, an outcast who lives in the carcass of a car. Their second son Booge is awaiting trial for various thefts and Beth cannot accompany him because of being severely beaten by her husband; as a result a reform school is given custody of him. Beth tries to convince her husband to visit Booge and Jake even rents a car to take his family to the reformatory, but on the way Jake stops at the bar and gets drunk. One evening Jake, as usual, brings friends home to get drunk, but Beth refuses to drink and sing as usual. Jake's bully brother rapes his niece Grace, and she, after writing about the horror she suffered in her diary, hangs herself from a tree in the yard. After a violent fight with Jake, Beth takes her dead daughter to her father's original island for a Maori funeral. Then reading the diary of Grace, she discovers the infamy and returns to the city where she faces the rapist, who at first denies everything. At first he is backed by Jake, who, however, after reading his daughter's confession, beats his brother to death. While Beth takes the children away to their grandparents, Jake can only carry on cursing, waiting for the police to arrive.