Cry Freedom (1987)

Since Cry Freedom is a film of such noble purpose, I don’t want to seem glib by suggesting that my disinterest in the film had to do with its subject matter.  Yes, of course, apartheid is a tragic global development.  It should be in the headlines, there should be protests, there should be activists like Steven Biko working against it.  I also realize that such statements are not exactly revealing but I’m not here to further the cause, I’m here to review a movie made about it and, given what I’ve just seen over the past 158 minutes, I did not see a movie that changed my liberal standing one way or the other.

After winning the Oscar for Gandhi, Director Richard Attenborough again tries from another portrait of a martyred peacemaker and the results are, again, like a plate of broccoli.  I was there.  I saw the whole thing.  My liberal social consciousness is affirmed and I feel slightly enlightened for having seen it.  Was it a good movie?  Professionally, yes.  Personally, I won’t come back for seconds.  While I sat there with my fingers tented and my eyes focused on the importance of what was happening, my brain just wandered around until my bladder made me conscious of how far away we were from the end of the movie.  No one wants to be the insensitive clod fumbling up the aisle to get to the john in a movie this important.

Anyway, while I acknowledge the importance of Steven Biko’s sacrifice, I admit that Cry Freedom was not an experience that moved me all that much.  A lot of this had to do with the fact that Steven Biko is killed midway through the movie and so many of the flashbacks feel wildly out of place.  Up to that point, the movie had developed a friendship between a South African journalist Donald Woods (the movie is based on two of his books, no less) and Biko, the leader of the Black Consciousness Movement who would be murdered by South African police.

The friendship is important because something in their meeting changed Woods’ heart on the whole matter.  He had initially seen Biko’s struggle as a form of reverse racism but through their connection together, he begins to understand what it is really all about – an inhuman mode of nationwide racism based on thoughtless political motivations.

For those who don’t really understand the situation, the first half of the movie boldly and brilliantly puts us right in the middle of the crisis.  A small illegal shanty town is invaded by armored vehicles, called Hippos, with terrifying images right out of Nazi Germany: officers, slavering dogs, cowering innocents, people thrashed about for no reason at all.  The point, of course, is to remind us that the bane of Nazi-like tyranny did not die in the bunker with Hitler.  It is alive and well.

The problem comes midway through the movie after Steven Biko is murdered and we are left with the plight of Donald Woods and his attempts to get his family across the border and out of harm’s way.  The fulcrum, we come to understand, is not the safety of his family but rather getting him to safety so that he can write his book . . . books.

The whole pallete of the movie changes when Biko is murdered.  The movie becomes Woods’ story and while I admire the performance of Kevin Kline, I felt a disconnect from the flashbacks, especially to the Soweto massacre in 1976 which took place several months before Biko was arrested and killed.  Therefore, it might have made more sense for that story to be imparted from Biko to Woods as a learning point.  Flashing back after his death, it feels out of place.  We don’t get the emotional pull from Biko and we take the white person’s point of view.

That’s the problem with the whole film.  Biko is not the center, but a supporting player in his own story.  Until his death, this is a very moving and well-made film, but afterwards we just wait for it to be over.  The back half of the film loses focus and, I’m afraid, lost my interest.  Why did we need a shift in focus away from the person who should be telling the story?