I was asked at a recent party of ‘Bloggers why I don’t write more about Africa and in an email this week by a South African correspondent if I would write something about apartheid. In both cases I pleaded the deadly combination of ignorance and emotion. I just couldn’t write well about a continent I know so little of and about things that upset me so much. The nearest I’m going to get for the moment is to recommend a true crime film set in apartheid South Africa.
A female friend of mine describes the actor Thomas Jane as one of the few men she has seen on screen who looks “really hot” even with blond hair. If you are male and browsing the racks at the local rental shop with your girlfriend then you should use his hotness to persuade her to see past the macho packaging of the unfortunately named Stander. She’ll be glad you did because the film is nothing like the naff low-budget gangster “actioner” the cover makes out. If, afterwards, she falls for Jane, you can cure her by playing the interview with him included in the extras, during which his real voice is revealed as a kind of high-pitched Tom Hanks. In the movie he delivers almost every line in a butch Afrikaans accent.
Stander is mostly politically correct, but doesn’t fall into the trap I expected it to of painting its setting in black and white (though all the main characters are white). It does, however, paint the screen with lots of interesting filtered tones. I’m probably about five generations behind cinematographic technology so I expect they do this by tinting every frame digitally later. In twenty years time when its currently cool look is dated they should be able to go back their hard-drives (or data crystals) and release a new version of it with truer colour.
Stander is stylish, bleakly funny, and moving. It’s not a great movie, but it’s a very good one. Amongst other achievements, it depicts the bloody outcome of a township protest in a way that is shockingly realistic and at the same time terribly beautiful to look at. And Thomas Jane can act too—not that I am qualified to judge either his hotness or his accent.
[Sadly for some viewers the experience of watching this film will be marred by one of the central character’s occasional physical resemblance to George Galloway, but you must catch it anyway, if only to appreciate how awfully, awfully clever my headline for this post is.]
Other than for a few months when you were a screaming infant, did you ever live in Africa?
Reason I ask is that my half-brother and sister have a Nigerian mother (my step-mother), and other than the fact that their mother is Nigerian they have about as much connection to Africa as I do.
If either of them to grow up to be bloggers, I would be astounded if they wrote about Africa on that basis alone.
On that basis I should be blogging about France and Scotland more regularly.
[…] Further to Tim and Anthony’s comments, some boring personal information. My mum is from Freetown, Sierra Leone; my dad is from Preston, Lancs. I was born in Nigeria. I left Africa when I was two and have never returned as an adult—even to visit. Since my cousins have all left, and my grandmother there is gone, the only surviving relative I know in Africa is my Auntie Clarina who is still in Freetown. You now have everything you need to steal my identity. And I now have two perfect excuses to put this photo up: “Hey, honeyz, come back to my crib and check out my smoove white poloneck.” [click image to enlarge] […]
I rented this here in Cape Town though it had a cinema run here — i expect it went straight to video elsewhere. It’s certainly worthwhile, although Stander was very unlikely to have been as concerned about being an enforcer for apartheid as is portrayed here. Deborah Kara Unger is also very good as the wife, and unlike Jane, gets close to the accent by not overdoing it. The George Galloway lookalike is the distinguished SA stage and screen actor Marius Weyers, who had a good run in Hollywood.
As a matter of interest, one of the Stander gang was recently released from prison and has been doing the rounds of talk shows.
I would recommend “Mapantsula”, which looks at the career of a township gangster in the apartheid era. It’s not new, but should be traceable on DVD.
Marius may have some work coming his way then…
I just wanted to add my voice to that of the Geek’s. It is an excellent film and should be seen. I can’t speak for the Jane’s accent, though I can, being gay, confirm that he is, indeed, tasty. These considerations aside, though, I felt that the film managed to be entertaining and moving without being overly preachy and self-righteous (always a danger when westerners decide to make films set in the developing world). It allowed for the fact that its audience might just be as intelligent as the film-makers themselves. As someone said, it is not a GREAT film (whatever that might mean) but it is certainly one of the best fils I have seen in the last few years. Please – go to see it. Have a happy new year.
Damien! For me, for New Years, for SOMETHING–please try not to be such a flamming sexual troglodyte in 2006.
Your opinion about Thomas Jane’s “hotness”–or any other male’s “hotness”–is as legitimate as anyone else’s. That you continue to think otherwise is a symptom of a (mostly male and heterosexual) malady that I’ve helpfully shorthanded as Vestigial Progressive Nervous Nellyism Disorder.
This disorder’s primary symptom is a queasy conviction that the desire to spoon with someone till spring is a prerequisite for deciding whether you think they’re Hot or Not. (Its secondary symptom is the conviction that affirming the opposite will make one look like a hopeless closet case to the opposite sex.)
Is it really too much to ask that you at least try being half as comfortable judging the attractiveness of male movie stars as the predominately homosexual male moguls of the fashion industry are about judging the attractiveness of leggy female supermodels?
Oy..
No it isn’t. When they express a preference, straight men tend to go for “pretty boys”—cf my lusting after the younger Brad Pitt here—so my taste in men is a pointless extension of my taste in women. Similarly (with a couple of exceptions) I’d rarely bother to take a straight female friend’s advice on the question of whether a given female actress is sexy enough for me to watch a film she’s starring in. They are often hopeless at that kind of judgment.
(Funnily enough, I have a related post brewing that touches on the subject of girl-on-girl aesthetics—I’ve just got to figure out a way of depersonalizing it so it doesn’t get me into trouble with various female friends…)