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Sleeper's Wake (2012)
Edgy contemporary South African thriller
Adapted from the 2009 novel by Alistair Morgan, Sleeper's Wake is a beautifully shot psychological drama set predominantly in a sleepy holiday town on the south coast of KwaZulu Natal. Built around some strong central performances and featuring some powerful scenes, the film also struggles with a persistently gloomy tone: some modulations in the characters' emotional journeys would've been welcome.
John Wraith (the once again excellent Lionel Newton) is a struggling writer coming to terms with the death of his wife and daughter. After a predictable montage of post-traumatic symptoms, he is urged to pull himself together at a friends house in the jungly environs of Nature's Cove. There he meets a shifty armed response guard and the Venter family, particularly the domineering and devout father, Roelf (Deon Lotz), and his rebellious, predictably voluptuous daughter (Jackie). The Venters, it turns out, are dealing with a family trauma of their own, and the fragile John is drawn into the vortex of Roelf's battle with Jackie. Denial, aggression, despair push the free-spirited, volatile Jackie towards the disbelieving John (much older, not necessarily wiser, and alcoholic) and it is only a matter of time before the two traumatised fathers clash.
The highlight of the film is the combination of Flo Ballack's production design and Willie Nel's cinematography. Sleeper's Wake really is a beautiful film, the heavily forested setting at once fantastical and ominous. Even the sea is framed as a surfer's heaven and yet is terrifying in one scene as a wave builds dramatically before John dives beneath it. Both Newton and Lotz are excellent, though I miss the insouciant slyness that Newton has brought to other performances (see for example, Jump the Gun). Jay Anstey is good as the hot/cold dynamo, Jackie, though - as with all the performances - a little levity and surprise would thicken the characters. Though the Rockwellian storekeepers come close to providing some humorous relief, what is missing throughout are moments of surprise.
The film's climax will either sell you on the film or disappoint you. I really liked it. It focuses Afrikaans author Eugene Marais's meditations on baboons through a contemporary lens and provides the necessary eruption of tension that the narrative promises all along.
The lack of tonal variation aside, Sleeper's Wake is a strong film and an assured feature debut for director Barry Berk after his extensive work in South African television. It is also pleasing to see the richness of the country's literary production being adapted by South African filmmakers into compelling local productions.
Teza (2008)
Extraordinary film about war and society
An extraordinary film, dense and lyrical, sharply political and deeply personal. As in Sankofa, writer/director Haile Gerima moves between several worlds - not just 'Africa' and the Ethiopian diaspora in Europe, but also (as another reviewer has noted) between Ethiopias and Europes, temporally and geographically.
At times, these worlds merge effortlessly together; however, in certain scenes, the acting and staging seem rather stilted. For example, I found the Ethiopian scenes were always compelling, while some of the German scenes had characters merely saying their lines.
Gerima's use of flashbacks and flashfowards helps to weave together many narrative strands, not just the political commentary about Ethiopia's traumatic period under the rule of Mengistu. There is a genuine sense of optimism and celebration from the young Ethiopians (including Anberber and his best friend Tesfaye) as the rule of Selasie comes to an end tempered by the terrifying consequences for both men of their idealism and pragmatism, respectively. There is also a narrative of orphans, young men left parentless because of the civil war and Ethiopia's conflicts with Italy. In fact, the closing scene reminds me a lot of Rossellini's Rome, Open City. There is the subtle and not-so-subtle racism experienced by Ethiopians living in a Germany that moves, not unproblematically, from division to unification. There is the painful disintegration of family, seen in Anberber's relationship with is mother and brother, and their position within the community of the village.
Most tellingly, Gerima's nuanced look at patriarchy and politics in the metropolis and the countryside in Ethiopia provides tremendous context for the brutal armed conflict that erupts unexpectedly throughout the film.
And yet this is also an extraordinarily beautiful film with passages of bright hope and love. Gerima may be withering in his critique of various political systems, but he is not defeated by them. This is what makes Teza such a human film, one of best films I have seen about war and society.
I, Afrikaner (2013)
Afrikaner identity explored from the inside
Annalet Steenkamp's examination of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity through the lens of her own family is, by turns, fascinating, shocking, moving and curious. It is perhaps its unevenness that I found distracting, though its approach to the material is never less than interesting.
Steenkamp films her extended family on various farms in the Free State as they deal with the exigencies of life on isolated farms, from the economic pressure on farmers, to labour management and the pervasive threat of violence and death. People are married, children are born, some die peacefully and some are murdered brutally. Steenkamp's voice is often heard asking questions of her relations, though she herself remains something of a cypher, a filmmaker amongst salt-of-the-earth farmers and so something of an outsider.
The struggle she captures is the desire to maintain a way of life that is partly mythological - a land bequeathed by God - and partly very human: where will I go and what will I do if I don't live and work on the farm. She captures the idealism of the young and the bitter, casual racism of the older generations, along with the strange paradoxes that lead one character to angrily denounce interracial relationships yet fondly celebrate the relationship she shares with the gardener who helps her tend her garden.
The style is revelatory and, at times almost impressionistic, with key events signalled by natural phenomena and stylised compositions. At one point, I felt like I was watching the ominous scenes just before the locust plague in Malick's Days of Heaven. Some viewers might find these choices irritating, especially as they occur alongside several other shooting styles from hand- held camera to de-centered interviews. I enjoyed the experimental approach, though, even when it didn't work. What I'm less certain about is Steenkamp's open-endedness and strange distance from the subjects, as if she can't quite decide to be there or not be there.
Miners Shot Down (2014)
Hard-hitting investigation into the August 2012 Marikana massacre
Director Rehad Desai pulls no punches in this investigation of the events and incidents leading up to the massacre of striking platinum miners at Marikana in August 2012 in which over 100 men were shot, 34 of whom died.
The format of film is relatively straight-forward. After showing live footage of the police opening fire on the striking miners, Desai examines events in the preceding days and also takes us further back to the vexed relationship between the trade unions and the ruling African National Congress in South Africa. While the police hierarchy takes a battering in the location footage shot before the massacre and the hearings held in the aftermath, Desai's real target is ex- unionist turned multi-millionaire businessman and now deputy president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa.
Once a respected figure in the ANC and a crucial component of the transition to democracy that saw South Africa through the trauma and liberation of the 1994 elections. Desai uses what he can get from the eloquent and evasive Ramaphosa to suggest that behind the brutality (and cold-bloodedness in some cases) of the police action, greater forces were at work to break the strike and cauterise the wound that divided the trade unions from their political patrons.
While the commission of inquiry material is rather dry, the interviews are great, but what is most engrossing is the dialogue that one hears (for the first time) between the miners and the police in the days before the massacre.
One could accuse Desai of not presenting the full picture, of not addressing, for example, the stories that suggest the miners had gathered with an intention to engage in conflict with the police. But I'm with Emile de Antonio on this one: objectivity is a myth and there is no such thing as an unbiased documentary. Desai delivers a provocation, a call to consider the cost of government and capital turning their combined power on the poor.
Victim Five (1964)
Bondian hi-jinks in South Africa
The influence of Bond is writ large in this very cheap and Mystery Science Theater-worthy thriller (cf Agent for H.A.R.M.). Lex Barker saunters through most of the action as Steve Martin, hand in pocket, careful not to take things too seriously and mostly incredulous at the unmotivated action that unravels around him.
From the moment he disembarks at Cape Town harbour he is beset with snooping policemen, eager women and danger. As a Capetonian, it is really funny watching Helga (Ann Smyrner) drive Steve along the Atlantic seaboard while driving over picturesque Chapman's Peak (twice) which is on the opposite side of the mountains. Of course, the reason for this is to throw in an action-packed car-chase.
Seductive and dangerous woman (check), villain with a foreign accent (check), innovative but failed assassination attempts (check, including underwater scuba manoeuvre), dramatic exterior set-pieces (check, including unnecessary trip to the Cango Caves and game park), dangerous animals (check), racist exploitation of local scenes and people (check).
The opening scene (which uncannily foreshadows Live and Let Die)is great and gives viewers a chance to see District Six on screen. This was just before the apartheid government began its program of forced removals. The Table Mountain climax - the film's alternate title is Table Bay - is both laughable and spectacular, and so badly edited you wonder if everyone was enjoying Cape Town's beach action a little too much. Still, it's a curiosity for those keen to see Cape Town in a previous era, or to see the influence of the espionage genre in the wake of James Bond.
The Second Sin (1966)
Hitchcock in Cape Town
Cape Town was the setting for a few thrillers in the sixties, partly because of its scenic beauty and partly because it was pretty cheap to film there. The Second Sin is a wholly South African film and it's not too bad. A Hitchcockian legal thriller with a maguffin, a blonde and a twist, the film makes full use of the city's landmark mountain, cable-way and beaches. It even has a sharp little live music scene featuring The Staccatos and the score, in general, is excellent. Gert van den Bergh dominates as the wise old advocate, Anton Rossouw while James White is solid as the put-upon Michael Gray. Very hard to find, but worth a look if old-fashioned courtroom thrillers take your fancy.