Conventional biopic lacks power to exploit uncanny timing of release
In its pursuit of content to fill its pages and airtime, the news media can seem tasteless, even ghoulish.
Case in point: As the world mourned Nelson Mandela, 95, and reporters
and pundits struggled to assess the legacy of the South African freedom
fighter, entertainment journalists wondered what the Dec. 5 death would
mean for the box-office revenues and Oscar chances of “Mandela: Long
Walk to Freedom,” a biopic adapted from Mandela’s autobiography that
coincidentally began its U.S. theatrical run the week of the
anti-apartheid hero’s demise.
In an article headlined “A Macabre Assist for Weinstein’s ‘Mandela,’”
The New York Times reported that the death could “give the film a boost
on the Oscar trail” but also “complicate” the Weinstein Company’s
promotional strategy. The story referenced — with something like
grudging admiration — the movie’s “morbidly uncanny timing.”
Less than three weeks later, such considerations already seem
irrelevant as well as tacky. A no-show in best-of-2013 year-end critics’
polls, “Mandela” — which opens in Memphis on Christmas Day — is not
vivid, daring or passionate enough to exploit, for better or worse, the
unexpected current-events context of its arrival. It is not an adequate
tribute to South Africa’s first black president, nor is it a disgrace to
his memory. It is a rather conventional and pious movie biography that
misses the opportunity to be more — to use art and imagination to bring
insight to a life history that otherwise might be better served with a
straight documentary.
Scripted by William Nicholson, an old hand at historical subjects,
both legitimate (“Elizabeth: The Golden Age”) and fanciful
(“Gladiator”), and directed by Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn
Girl”), “Long Walk to Freedom” — the movie shares the title of Mandela’s
1995 memoir — is the more or less chronological story of a young boy
with the royal blood of the Thembu clan who leaves rural South Africa
for the city, to become a “native” lawyer, charismatic lady-charmer,
African National Congress leader, revolutionary, prisoner and
international hero in the struggle to end South Africa’s enforcement of
apartheid, an institutionalized system of “total segregation” and
“uncompromising white superiority.”
Mandela is played by Idris Elba, a powerful actor who here appears
more stolid than strong, even if he does exude a Mandelaesque sense of
moral authority. Naomie Harris, meanwhile, is Mandela’s wife, Winnie,
and her on-screen transformation from helpmate to firebrand is more
interesting than her husband’s steady and ultimately more effective
resolve.
Winnie’s radicalization occurs while Nelson Mandela is inside the
infamous Robben Island prison, serving a life sentence for sabotage.
(The movie does not shy away showing Mandela participating in the
bombing of apparently unoccupied power plants and government offices.)
During this enforced absence from the world stage, Mandela becomes an
international symbol of freedom and even a celebrity, and the movie
might have profited if it had focused exclusively on this or some other
dramatic period of his life, rather than illustrating highlights of his
entire “long walk.”
The movie presents Mandela — who served 28 years before South African
officials succumbed to international pressure and released him from
prison — as the right man for the right time, a Martin Luther King-like
figure of uncompromising convictions who nonetheless appreciated the
give-and-take of political negotiation. “We cannot win a war, but we can
win an election,” Mandela tells his impatient associates who favor a
violent response to apartheid. Speaking to a white leader, he is more
scolding: “You’ve always been afraid of us. It’s made you an unjust and
brutal people.”
This brutishness is arguably underplayed, as if the filmmakers were
wary of opening old wounds. The movie includes scenes of massacres and
references to “necklacing” (the practice of setting fire to a tire
placed around a victim’s neck), but “Long Walk to Freedom” — unlike “12
Years a Slave” — doesn’t go for the throat; as a result, it’s sometimes
more dry than urgent.
Unsurprisingly, the film benefits from its African locations and
distinctive period detail, especially when the action takes place in the
impoverished townships or rural villages that are unlike the settings
seen in American stories set in the same decades. Also novel is the
South African jazz and pop that too infrequently enlivens the
soundtrack. Finally, the end credits feature a new song by U2 that is
just adequate enough to be nominated for an Academy Award.
