Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

[Drunk Monk]

It occurred to me that most of what I know of Mandela, I learned through music. I got into reggae before he was freed and remember the movement. I remember learning about Botha from Bunny Wailer's Botha the Mosquito and owning Little Steven's Sin City album. Even in this movie, there's a photo at the end of someone wearing a Human Rights Now T-shirt, a concert I worked back in the day (I still have that shirt - it's one of my favs). Of course, I learned more about Mandela later through more complete sources.

The film moves at a steady clip, almost too quick to get very deep. Idris couldn't capture Mandela, IMO. Kingsley did a better job with his 'brownface' Gandhi. Idris totally misses Mandela's charisma and spirituality. The lack of Gandhi's influence was a major oversight, and Mandela's spiritual transformation in prison was totally short-sheeted. The film made it more of an adventure - it lost the literate element as Mandela was a powerful writer. I felt Winnie was poorly portrayed as well (why she didn't age while Mandela did was mysterious). But it did put a timeline on events which helped me gain more perspective on it all, and matched the music to the era - Marley, Public Enemy and U2 - that was well done. Not a great film. More like the sort of film Hollywood makes to feel good about snubbing black actors at the Oscars (never mind all the Asian actors who've been snubbed - srsly, how many Asians won Oscars? Ok, delete Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Now how many?) I think I would have preferred to watch a documentary on Mandela than this.

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Who are you kidding? There aren't any asian actors in Hollywood. Otherwise we would see them on the big screen.

[Drunk Monk]

...wasn't there one in The Interview?

[Greg_phpbb3_import1]

Speaking of films my parents saw that I haven't ( and never will), they saw The Interview on Netflix. For some reason they thought it was terrible. I could have told them that.

[El Dingo]

I liked that they didn't flinch from the "Winnie Necklace" stuff. They didn't try to whitewash the violence and make this a 'St. Nelson' movie.

This movie is a perfect example of a story that can't be told in 2 hours. A man's life just can't be compressed that way. On the other hand we cannot experience another's lifetime in our own. All we can do is hope that what they show keeps a tiny fraction of the truth straight.