The following text is a review of the film Cry Freedom, which is set in South Africa.
| 1 | 1 | I have used a lot of space in this column criticizing films which heroize white | |
| 2 | journalists, and my expectations of Cry Freedom were low. Yet I left the cinema as a | ||
| 3 | movie-goer filled with righteous anger at the regime which tortured and killed Steve Biko | ||
| 4 | and so many other blacks; while at the same time, as a critic, pondering over this feeling | ||
| 5 | and the devices which aroused it. | ||
| 2 | 6 | The immediate context of the film is well known. It tells the true story of Donald | |
| 7 | Woods, white South African newspaper editor whose attempts to expose the | ||
| 8 | circumstances of Biko's death in detention led to his banning, followed by a dramatic | ||
| 9 | escape with his family. Woods' book, Biko, smuggled out with him, had a wide-reaching | ||
| 10 | effect in focusing attention on Biko's case and on the torture and murder carried out | ||
| 11 | routinely by South African 'security' forces. The Woods have acted as advisors on the | ||
| 12 | film which in many respects goes out of its way to de-heroize them. The Woods are not | ||
| 13 | radicals: they have a black live-in maid and at the start of the film, Biko accurately calls | ||
| 14 | Woods 'a white liberal who clings to all the advantages of the white world'. | ||
| 3 | 15 | But it is precisely this which allows the film its central persuasive device; the | |
| 16 | gradual exposure of Donald Woods' flawed liberal position and his education by Biko | ||
| 17 | and by events which lead to a total undermining of his belief in South African 'justice'. | ||
| 18 | The mechanism is that of a conservative view which may be that of a general audience | ||
| 19 | and which is inscribed in the film in the form of a sympathetic character who is then | ||
| 20 | confronted by a reality which forces him or her to change it. This is by no means a stupid | ||
| 21 | way of challenging deeply held 'neutral' attitudes. | ||
| 4 | 22 | The film really comes alive when Woods first explores the world beyond white | |
| 23 | privilege and tests out his ideas on Biko and his friends. It is from their mouths that | ||
| 24 | attacks on liberal hypocrisy work best, because they carry all the force of an utterly | ||
| 25 | different experience. Their attacks come across sympathetically because the film has | ||
| 26 | taken care to show from the outset the far more extreme dangers blacks are subject to all | ||
| 27 | the time. Thus the film's own bottom-line reality lends support to Biko's speech and | ||
| 28 | comments and we eagerly anticipate the realignment of Woods' views in accordance with | ||
| 29 | this reality. | ||
| 5 | 30 | The second half of the film provides, in a sense, a retrospective justification of his | |
| 31 | changed perceptions, because the dramatic chase and escape create a sense of danger (as | ||
| 32 | in any thriller) and we start to feel the oppressiveness of the regime not through political | ||
| 33 | argument, as in the sections where Biko is still alive, but through the different narrative | ||
| 34 | devices of suspense. Yet the film ends with a considered attempt to counterbalance the | ||
| 35 | drama of the white family: at the moment of their greatest danger, flying unauthorized | ||
| 36 | over South African airspace, it cuts to an extended sequence of the Soweto massacre and | ||
| 37 | ends with a long list of all those killed in detention, including Biko, merely one among | ||
| 38 | many. | ||
| 6 | 39 | This measured counter-weighting is not only part of the film's politics but of its | |
| 40 | appeal. For at heart it represents a kind of improved liberalism: if the story is in a way | ||
| 41 | the white liberal's Bildungsroman, the movie itself is its product. Donald Woods' flawed | ||
| 42 | liberalism is exposed, not to be replaced by radicalism but to be made whole again. In a | ||
| 43 | period of change, liberal ideology must let go certain positions - 'de-territorialize' - in | ||
| 44 | order to re-form or 're-territorialize' in ways more appropriate to the times. This is almost | ||
| 45 | exactly what Cry Freedom does - which is why its first half is so genuinely powerful, | ||
| 46 | representing as it does the undermining and letting go of a liberal racist position, and | ||
| 47 | with its positive presentation of black leaders. | ||
| 7 | 48 | This half of the film provokes a political anger, as indeed it should. But by the end, | |
| 49 | why am I feeling so righteous? Is it the immense narrative relief as Woods reaches a | ||
| 50 | British Embassy and is offered a cup of tea? Is it perhaps the very fact that Britain is | ||
| 51 | where Woods escaped to? Is it the certainty that the film is right, that I am right, that all | ||
| 52 | right-minded people are right, in opposing apartheid? This feeling is simultaneously the | ||
| 53 | strength and the weakness of the film: a strength, because of course apartheid is wrong | ||
| 54 | and the more people convinced of it the better; a weakness, because in leaving a glow of | ||
| 55 | indignation about South Africa, the film never undermines our ultimate faith in the | ||
| 56 | fairness of its updated liberalism (it endorses only non-violent black struggle) and, by | ||
| 57 | implication, our own traditions. Perhaps some day someone will make a big-budget | ||
| 58 | main stream film about police violence to blacks in this country. If that seems hard to | ||
| 59 | imagine, it is interesting to consider why. | ||
| Judith Williamson in the 'New Statesman', December 4, 1987 |