CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY
A film review by John Schuurman
Copyright 1996 John Schuurman
Directed by: Darrell Jones Roodt Reviewed by John Schuurman
The only bad thing about *Cry, the Beloved Country* is that its run in the "big houses" has been so very short. It ran in Chicago a scant two weeks. Doubtless the film has lost money for Miramax. One has to wonder why the studio decided to make the investment at all, what with apartheid in South Africa being dismantled and all. It seems that for a movie whose prominent feature is a hated political system to succeed, the politics have to be current. But there is the rub. In my eyes, the thing that makes the movie work is that the cruel system of oppression is now a fresh but receding memory. Had the system been current, the movie would have been much more harsh and strident. The political agenda to break the hated system would have dominated (and destroyed) this work as a film.
Now, given a small buffer of time since the real thing, it can concentrate on being a redemption story set in a beautiful but treacherous place. The memory of apartheid is fresh enough that it doesn't have to be explained, it simply is the great pall that hangs over the whole. The action of the movie then gets its poignancy and becomes all the more refreshing as you see convergence and healing and forgiveness take place under this shroud.
"Cry" is a faithful remake of Alan Paton's great novel by the same name. Rev. Stephen Kumalo, (a simple Zulu pastor given heroic dimensions by the incomparable James Earl Jones) receives news that he must go to the great and frightening city of Johannesburg to try to rescue his sister and his son. He finds only tragedy. His sister is reduced to the life of a prostitute and his son kills a man in a botched robbery attempt.
The fascinating thing of the movie is watching Kumalo put one faithful foot after the other, never failing in his trust, always in the scriptures or in prayer, looking to the Lord. Imagine a character about whom a fellow pastor says, "There goes the only truly good man I have ever known."
Jones' portrayal of Kumalo is so good and moving he deserves the big awards for the work. It is sad that he probably won't even be noticed because of the failed economy of the thing.
The great moments are the reconciliation moments between James Jarvis (Richard Harris) a wealthy white racist landowner and Kumalo. As the pious pastor and the supremacist farmer encounter each other, and Kumalo tells Jarvis that it is his son who has killed Jarvis' boy, we watch as recognition, hatred, and forgiveness are processed. That such process can happen is our audacious hope in the face of our post-apartheid, post-OJ, post million-man-march angst. This is a deeply spiritual movie that has come at just the right time. Too bad most folks won't see it.
for more reviews by John Schuurman see http://www.mcs.com./%7Esjvogel/wcrc/movies.html
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