This chapter analyses Brad McGann’s highly esteemed adaptation (2004) of Maurice Gee’s novel In My Father’s Den (1972) as evidence of a prevailing trend in New Zealand coming-of-age films whereby the vision of a source work is regularly updated to reflect the different values and perspectives of a later generation. In this case, the updating involves a shift of emphasis from the destructive effects on children of puritan religiosity and repressiveness to those of lack of communication among family members, combined with the preservation of unspoken, but collectively known, family secrets, reflecting historical changes that had occurred in New Zealand society since the generation of Gee (born 1931) and that of McGann (born 1964).
