Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

It's a challenge to make a movie about great men. Though it won a bushel of Oscars, I didn't find Gandhi all that compelling, and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, is also lacking in the narrative department. It's a nice history lesson (provided it's all true) but there's just something a little too stately about it, a little too rote, to make it sing.

Directed by Justin Chadwick and starring Idris Elba as Mandela, the film covers his life from his boyhood to his election as President of South Africa, about as unlikely a rise as any of this century. He was a lawyer, defending other blacks in court, as white witnesses blanched at even being spoken to by a black man as an equal. Initially opposed to politics, his friend is beaten to death by white policemen and the death is noted as from "congenital syphilis." Eventually he is recruited into the African National Congress, and after a decade or more of attempting to negotiate equal rights, he turns to sabotage.

He is captured and tried, and the judge, who could have sentenced him to death, decides life in prison is better. This decision by this unnamed judge probably saved South Africa from complete destruction, as Mandela became an indispensable man in the passage of power from white to black.

We then see his 27 years in prison, with little victories like getting long trousers to bitter moments like receiving tragic news from home. He and his cohorts maintain there stance, and he refuses P.W. Botha's offer of release on the condition that he reject violence. Instead, he will be released a national hero in 1990 by F.W. de Klerk, and then be the key figure as blacks gain the vote.

All of this is interesting, but could have been a documentary. I do admire that the film does not make Mandela perfect. We see his philandering, and he isn't shy about his being a leader. We also see the dark side of Winnie, his second wife, who was a hero but is now pretty much a disgrace, as while Mandela was in prison she led a campaign of violent revenge, particularly upon her own people, with necklacing, a vicious form of execution that involved putting a tire around someone's neck and lighting it on fire.

I think the best part of the film is showing how Mandela was the man, the only man, that could lead a peaceful transition. He refused to seek revenge, surely knowing that revenge does not change the past, and his call for the Truth and Reconciliation hearings saved South Africa from more of a slaughter than there already was.

Elba and Naomie Harris as Winnie both give fine performances, and I can't really pinpoint anything wrong with the film, it just kind of goes along without transcending its subject matter. Today I spoke to my boss, who is from South Africa (a white woman), who told me that when she was young she had no idea who Mandela was, because of censorship. He was far more famous here in the U.S., where there were rallies to free him.