In My Country

You really gotta write reviews right after you see films. It's much harder days after. Just a tip.

My friend and I went to the premiere, by mistake actually. We thought it was just a regular screening and then Samuel Jackson and Juliette Binoche appeared! (Join AIVF and this can happen to you.) There's a lot of anxiety at these things. One woman, an agent/publicist type, needed my friend and I to move so that someone more important could have our seats. She was pretty rude and called us “girls” about three times. It didn't bother me right away. It always takes a few minutes to get made about stuff that happens. My friend, however, was mad, right away. She was about to leave when the folks that were more important than us, moved over and let us sit with them. That's when I got mad. I let go of it but being called “girl” when there aren't that many people that looked like us (read: were black) just made me mad. I'm not sure how she meant it but it clearly it didn't sit well.

Ironically, In My Country deals a lot with race relations but in an awkward and ineffective way. The film takes place during the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that took place in South Africa after Apartheid. At these hearings, victims' family members could confront officers who killed their family members about the death of their loved one. If the officers answered truthfully about the specifics of the crime and could prove that they were simply following orders, they were given amnesty for these crimes.

Fascinating, right? A story that needs to be told, of course. Well, yes but better than they tell it!

Juliette Binoche is a reporter, Anna, for public radio who reports on the hearings. Samuel L. Jackson is a reporter from The Washington Post, sent to South Africa to cover the hearings as well. His name is Langston, named after Langston Hughes, a point that the movie thinks is really fascinating. (Listen, not every conscious black person in named after a black leader. I know this sounds silly coming from a woman named after Angela Davis but I promise you it isn't the case!) They report on the hearings, fall in love and some twists happen at the end that don't really work because there's not enough plot to make you care once they do.

Much like Hotel Rwanda (which is much, much better than this movie, mainly due to the performances in that film), the film's main flaw is that it is a public information piece and not much more. This film doesn't know what it wants to be. Is it a love story between Binoche and Jackson? (The awkward way the Director cuts out of their love scene shows you that even he is a bit weirded out by the idea of the two of them together) Is it about the hearings? (Not really because we only see a few hearings and the details of the cases are pretty non-specific. One scene includes a little black boy hugging a white officer to show him he forgives him for killing his parents! That was a bit much.)

The film worked well initially when it dealt with the difficulty that Binoche and Jackson had as outsiders (she Afrikaans, he African-American), trying to come to grips with the horrors that they were encountering at these hearings. She is trying to come to terms with her privilege, he with his pre-conceived ideas about whites and with Africa as a whole.

But once the story becomes a “love story”, the film falls apart. As beautiful as it sounds to say that after one night together, these two characters (who have significant others) fall madly in love, I didn't buy it. All of the conflicts between them fell away and they are just frolicking through the hearings arm and arms.

Another problem with this film that it shares with Hotel Rwanda is a little thing called white guilt. Both screenwriters feel it. Big time. Hey, I don't know what that's like. Can't relate. All I know is that when these writers feel it, it permeates the entire piece. Some white person has to have the, “I didn't know this was happening” or the “I feel really bad” line. That doesn't make it better so just don't have people say it. They lose all credibility, especially in situations as dire as these. Plus, if you do your job well enough, you can get across the main point of both of these films which is that there are good people and bad people and racism and classism has fucked everyone up so much that a lot of horrible things have happened in this world but not every single white person should be held responsible for it.

In both films, a white character has to drink tons of liquor and brood about how bad they feel. Nick Nolte was that person in Hotel Rwanda, Joaquin Phoenix to a lesser extent, but thank goodness their parts were small. Juliette Binoche is that person in this film and she is the main character. She is even prone to crying fits in the courtroom!

The bottom line here is if you want to know more about these hearings, check out Human Rights Watch and The Center for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. I learned a lot. You might want to save your $10 for a drink at a fancy bar or better yet, laundry. If you really, really like these actors, go for it. Both actors, especially Binoche who is g-o-r-g-e-o-u-s, do a great job but the plot (or lack thereof) might bother you.

Note: I feel a bit guilty trashing this film since it really tried to deal with a difficult topic and financial support of films like this means that other films like this can be made. However, since Hotel Rwanda did well, I think more movies like this (and hopefully better ones) will come to light. This is how I will sleep tonight.

Friends have seen ...Sometimes in April the HBO film about the massacre in Rwanda with the lovely Idris Elba, from The Wire, and say it is really good. Keep an eye out for that one.

Comments

[adriana]

Did you ever see the 1988 film "A World Apart"? It stars Jodhi May (who is amazing in this film!) and Barbara Hershey. Shawn Slovo wrote the screenplay, based largely on the political life of her mother Ruth First, an anti-apartheid activist.

[Ms. World]

Thanks for the review! I can`t see any of these films in my neck of the Japanese woods but I`ll try to catch them on video next year. I must say that Jackson & Binoche aren`t too people I can see heating up a film screen. Did they have any chemistry?