Training for service in the South African military, circa 1981: Oliver Hermanus' MOFFIE

I'm not certain that the title word of Oliver Hermanus' new movie, MOFFIE, is ever actually spoken in the film itself (TrustMovies' understanding of the language of Afrikaans is nearly nonexistent, so he may have simply missed it*), but as moffie is the film's title and its publicity materials explain that the word describes someone weak, effeminate and illegal -- all of which homosexuals were perceived as some forty years ago in South Africa (elsewhere, too) -- the word is not simply eponymous, it stands as the prime example of something you would not want to be thought or spoken about yourself. Especially when you're doing military training/service. 

If the movie manages nothing else, it will leave you feeling that South Africa, under the old Apartheid regime, offered the most disgusting military training seen on film. (Even Full Metal Jacket may seem something of a walk in the park.)

Mr. Hermanus, shown at right, concentrates most on the damage -- physical, emotional and psychological -- done to these young men under the charge and care of their commanding officer and less on the fact (perhaps mere assumption in some cases) of their homosexuality and any actual acting upon their emotional or physical attraction. 

Consequently Moffie is weighted heavily on the side of violence and ugliness to the point at which you're likely to imagine that you, too, would remain in the closet for the rest of your dreadful, unhappy life.

Which is what our hero, Nicholas (played by Kai Luke Brümmer, at left, standing)  seems to be doing throughout the film -- and, from what we can gather, by the finale, he will continue doing, once the credits have finished rolling. (This is not one of those movies in which a good time is had by all. Or by anyone except the white, racist majority who tow the party line.) 

Even the barely budding romance between two military mates is quite effectively nipped in that bud via the attitude/actions of the powers-that-be.

Why sit through a movie like Moffie? (My spouse didn't, giving up on it about one-half-hour in.) For me, the film showed so clearly and sadly the destruction that apartheid had on the soul and body of South African by the coercion of the populace into thinking and acting on the notion/law that the only things that count are being white and "straight."  Anyone else was deemed something like a fourth-class citizen -- if that. 

Not that this idea has somehow disappeared from today's world. Donald Trump and his wretched administration, as well as the current American Republican party and its mostly rabid followers continue to promulgate this philosophy. So it is salutary to be forced to see and deal with the results, as per South Africa in the early 1980s via this film, and in the USA today, as seen all around us.

As co-writer (with Jack Sidey), Mr. Hermanus does a decent directing job, though the sometimes lovely, sometimes heavy-handed musical score seems to lead the film, rather than the other way around. Performances are  up-to-snuff (there's copious eye candy on view), and the dialog, more often sparse than full-bodied, seems appropriate in terms of how closed off and hidden so many of the lives on view must necessarily remain.

If I seem less than thrilled with Moffie overall, this is because the film does not tell us much that we don't already know. It simply makes it worse than we might have imagined.

From IFC Films, in English and Afrikaans (with English subtitles) and running 104 minutes, the movie opens in theaters -- including a welcome return to the IFC Center in New York City and to the Laemmle's Royal, NoHo 7 and Playhouse 7 in the Los Angeles area this Friday, April 9. Click here for more information on theatrical venues across the country and /or how and where to view the film from your home.

*The film's publicist tells me that the term "moffie" was indeed used in one scene, so chalk this up to my hearing/foreign language problems!

Apartheid's end as seen from the opposite side: Nicolas Rossier's doc, THE OTHER MAN, opens

If, after the death of this most important African leader, you as did I began to feel overcome with the growing amount of Mandel-iana -- movies, documentaries, magazine articles, television shows and what not -- I can recommend a new documentary that opens this week and covers a fellow whom many of us Americans probably saw as the adversary of Nelson Mandela: former South African President, F.W. de Klerk. Titled THE OTHER MAN : F.W. de Klerk and the End of Apartheid and directed by Nicolas Rossier (shown below, who gave us the excellent doc, American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein), this new film might have you initially thinking that it will be some kind of whitewash of de Klerk. Not on your life.

Neither is the documentary a condemnation. Rather, it's a very interesting look at a man who would dearly and clearly like to be remembered as some sort of savior of South Africa, but is more likely to be thought of as the white South African at the top of the power chain who at least had the sense to do what had to be done to avoid an oncoming bloodbath. Frederik Willem De Klerk's family history goes back to the British vs the Dutch South Africans, and as the former President, pictured below, tells it, the preferable phrase is not "apartheid" but "separate development" to describe the condition affecting South African blacks under white rule during that prolonged era. (Yes, the phrase does remind one somewhat of our own country southern style "separate but equal" nonsense.)

Under this "separate development," de Klerk likes to remind us, "there was a big improvement of the physical lot of black people in South Africa." Yes, and also torture, imprisonment, massacres and the like. He also says -- and often reminds us that he said it -- "I've come to the conclusion the apartheid was wrong." Hallelujah.

We learn of the man's history, and of the influence of his older and more liberal brother, as well as his much more conservative first wife. During the course of the film, we are also reminded of our own President Reagan's pro-apartheid stance, and the Republican-controlled congress that actually over-rode Reagan's veto on the matter because American public opinion back then was so strongly anti-apartheid. (Can you remotely imagine our Republican-controlled congress doing anything like this today?)

The man is given credit for doing the right thing, even in the face of the possibility of his own security agency and military joining with the far-right wing. At the end of the day, he did have the guts to call the kind of shots -- freeing purely political prisoners, member of the Communist Party and the ANC -- that many members of the white South African establishment could not abide. At the same time that all this was going on, the world was watching what was happening in Angola, as well as the fall of the Berlin Wall, and soon after, if piece-meal, the fall of the Communist block itself.

The documentary shows us much of the violence that occurred, post apartheid; as the film makes clear, some whites and some blacks preferred violence over change. During that change, de Klerk and Mandela became partners -- if uncomfortable partners. In 1993, the pair was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (below). Many of the us recall Mandela's receiving it, fewer remember de Klerk's award.

Once the movie gets into certain individual stories of the recipients of violence -- the mother of a particular black woman (below), the blinding and bombing of a priest -- it goes a bit off-target because these individu-als, despite their loss, simply are not to the point of this film in the way that its leaders were and are. Finally, the documentary comes down to a question (regarding de Klerk's knowledge of the many assassinations and massacres that took place) that many Americans will remember from our own Nixon/Watergate years: What did he know and when did he know it?

It seems safe to say that de Klerk simply did not want to know and so lets himself off the hook too easily. Finally a comparison is made between this South African leader and Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev. The comparison is in some ways pretty apt, but hearing de Klerk point out where it goes off course is both funny and ridiculous. Whatever else he might be, the fellow has a mile-wide streak of egotistical narcissism.

From First Run Features and lasting just 76 minutes, The Other Man, a South Africa/USA co-production, has its New York theatrical premiere this Friday, February 6, at the Quad Cinema. Other playdates? None are listed yet, but being from FRF, the film will surely have a DVD release at some future date.

Sara Blecher's OTELO BURNING debuts digitally via Sundance Institute's Artist Services Program

If you were lucky enough to see the unusual and eye-opening 2011 documentary White Wash (if you'd like to, click here), you'll already be one-up on the idea of black surfboarders taking to the waves and having one of those waves "catch them," rather than the other way around -- which, as we're told, is simply untrue: A surfer, black or white, never "catches a wave." Rather, the wave catches him or her. All of the above is a kind of prelude to my discussion of the film that arrives here digitally this coming week: OTELO BURNING, a narrative movie by Sara Blecher that has its style and roots deep in the documentary form.

This should be no surprise, for the documentary realm is from where Ms Blecher hails (the filmmaker is shown above), having made the 2011 South African "train surfing" doc Surfing Soweto and then the South African version of the TV reality series, Who Do You Think You Are?  Initially, Otelo Burning seems quite like a documentary in many ways, from its look, sound (the movie is narrated as often as any dialog is spoken) and performances, which have to them, the kind of "reality" we often expect from that other, true-life movie format.

The film tracks a groups of friends -- Otelo (below, right); his little brother, Ntwe (below, left, and in the fourth photo down); their friend New Year and his sister Dezi (above); and a new and possible friend named Mandla, a sexy interloper (two photos below) who introduces the group to surfing, at which Mandla is pretty damned good.

There's a lot going on in Otelo Burning, much of it seemingly peripheral to the story -- the coming end of apartheid and the rebellions forming toward that purpose; Otelo and Ntwe's father's great fear that something will happen to Little Ntwe (he imagines it to be the mythical/legendary snake that's said to inhabit the local river, in which Ntwe almost drowns at the film's beginning); the expected racism that shows itself more in the white families for whom these blacks toil than in the surfing competitions in which they eventually engage.

Ms Blecher manages to weave all this together, however, and pretty well, until we understand that all of it is connected in ways that most of these kids -- too young and immature to do much more than surf, fall in love and get in a little trouble -- can possibly yet have figured out.

What dialog is heard is spoken mostly in Zulu and occasionally in English, and the performances by all range from at least serviceable to quite good. Blecher coaxes a real feeling of community and pleasant extemporaneous-ness from her actors, at least up until the point that coming-of-age morphs into heavy melodrama and something supremely dark.

We know that some of the folk we've seen and heard have access to guns, and that talk of an informer has been heard circulating. When a sudden and truly horrific act occurs, the horror of it threatens to derail the movie and in fact turns it into another genre -- without the filmmaker's possessing quite the genre-jumping expertise that a more seasoned hand might bring to the project.

Maturity is thrust suddenly upon certain characters, while the chance for this is stolen from one of them. Yet another is shown up to be supremely, shockingly evil. How well you buy all this will depend, I think, on how much you've given yourself over to the movie at the point at which it seems to change course. I had some trouble here, though I'm happy to have had the chance to meet this little group and share in their lives for a time.

The tag line about "freedom" on the movie's poster steals from the old Janis Joplin song. Freedom of a sort is certainly important to Otelo and his friends, though their understanding of it is at this point woefully limited. Surfing provides a taste of it (oddly, the movie spends rather little time on the actual learning of the skill or even of its being practiced in the water, above), but any kind of genuine freedom for South African blacks (or whites, for that matter) still eludes this sad, traumatized country. (For the best and deepest look so far at post-Apartheid South Africa, do see -- if you haven't already -- Disgrace, the fine and disturbing movie starring John Malkovich.)

Meanwhile, Otelo Burning opens digitally this Tuesday, January 14, via the Sundance Institute's Artist Services Program -- with the film available for pre-order through Sundance Institute’s Now Playing page, as a result of the partnership between Sundance Institute and IFP, which release several of their alumni films each year through this collaboration. Otelo Burning will also be making its debut on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Microsoft Xbox, Sony Entertainment Network, SundanceNOW, VUDU and YouTube/GooglePlay.

Don't believe The New York Times review: HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG

The monumental and encompassing new documentary that opened this past week -- one that rivals The Sorrow and the Pity, Shoah and Hotel Terminus in its depth and breadth (but has nothing to do with the Jewish holocaust) -- just got dissed and dismissed last Wednesday in a review by Mike Hale in The New York Times. While TrustMovies has agreed with Mr. Hale in the past and will certainly do so again, he cannot let pass what he considers a troubling opinion that counters the facts in certain regards.

I have just now finished the penultimate episode (the sixth of seven) of HAVE YOU HEARD FROM JOHANNESBURG, produced and directed by Connie Field, shown below). My original post, on the first four sections can be found here). Instead of deciding, as did Mr. Hale, that "there are repetitions large and small... which cover the same time period from slightly different angles (and) feel redundant," for me, one of the great strengths of the film is this very repetition of time periods, during which we learn quite different aspects of the fight against apartheid -- presented so well that there can be no real accusation of repetition. (Nor of the "average-to-mediocre television" level that Hale judges the work.)

Does the boycott of the South Africa Rubgy team repeat the oil embargo, for instance, or the student protests regarding "divestment" that riddled U.S. universities repeat the British boycott of food products from South Africa?  Or does the manner in which Barclay Bank handled its South Africa connection repeat the way Polaroid and Shell Oil handled theirs?  I don't think so.  Nor, I suspect, will you.

Most telling of all, perhaps, is the comparison of Ronald Reagan's "Constructive engagement with South Africa" to Leon Sullivan's (the first Black man to sit on the board of General Motors) set of principles to make the South African workplace better for Blacks.  You really can't compare, of course -- unless you've seen all of Ms Field's seven films.  By then, you'll realize just how little repetition there has been.  Episode 5 from Part 2, for instance, deals specifically with the African-American response to Apartheid and demonstrates, as well as anything I have seen, how local governments, a half a world away, were able to effect important and lasting changes on what seemed like an impossible situation.

This episode may also make you nostalgic for a time in America when Republican elected officials had the balls to actually vote against their party and its then-leader Ronald Reagan, who was firmly committed to supporting South Africa's Apartheid regime.  Field shows us the meeting between Bishop Desmond Tutu and Reagan, with our President explaining why we must continue to support South African because that country supported us during World War II. "Your history is faulty, Mr. President," Tutu corrects him. "Most of these people supported the Nazis."  But then Reagan, much like Republicans of today, seldom allowed facts to stand in the way of  his version of the "truth."

In the sixth and so far the best of the episodes (each one has seemed better than its predecessor, which probably only demonstrates Ms Field's keen organizational sense), we see how South Africa's business community at last had to rally against an intractable government in order to survive.  This is fascinating stuff, made only better by gem-like moments such as the interview with one businessman who recalls the first meeting between his business community and the African National Congress leader Oliver Tambo (shown below, center).  We businessmen, he explains, had heretofore only viewed Tambo and his group as "terrorists pawns of the Communist Russia."  And now, here we are sitting down to lunch?   And then Tambo makes a quip about how the seating arrangements rather aped apartheid.  Everyone breaks into laughter, the participants mingle and -- can it be? -- the beginning of some real change is afoot.

In another priceless moment -- during the embargo of oil to South Africa which began in 1979 and sent gas prices sky-rocketing -- a white South African housewife bemoans the exorbitant cost of petrol: "This is worse than when Tutu won the Peace Prize!"  So full of precise details and terrifically informative (not to mention surprising, moving and funny) interviews is each individual segment, that seeing one episode simply gears you up for the next.  Perhaps Mr. Hale's problem was sitting through the entire 8-1/2 hours without lunch or dinner? Which does bring up a possible caveat: How to manage the full set of three separate programs (together with separate admission prices) that make up this seven-part, 8-1/2 hours worth of film?

I would suggest viewing each of the three sections on a different day, if possible.  This will give you some time to mull over what you've seen, and the day between each screening will rest and freshen you for the next segment, with your brain ready to start making those many connections that each new episode is likely to set in motion.  (You can view the entire program with dates and times of the Film Forum screenings here.)  As a critic, I was lucky enough to receive a set of screeners, which I could pop into my DVD player, at approximately the rate of one per day (or every other) for a week and a half.  (The final episode did not include a finished sound track and final editing, I am told, because Ms Field was expected to show up just prior to the Film Forum opening with the finally-finished last section in hand.)  This episode-by-episode approach may be the very best way to see the groundbreaking documentary, but for most audiences, that will not happen until a DVD set is released commercially -- and for now, there is no assurance of this.  So head to Film Forum if you really want to view this masterwork.

Once I've seen that final section in finished form, I will probably make time for a wrap-up on this one-of-a-kind documentary.  There's so much to say here that I have barely scratched the surface.  Which is unfair to Ms Field and her film: a work that probes and probes until we finally understand the big picture via the accumulation of the minute details of the small one.  This is a task I would have imagined unfathomable until this filmmaker, with her genius for organization, put it all together and showed us the way.