A DRY WHITE SEASON (1989)

Martinique-born filmmaker Euzhan Palcy hit something of a critical/commercial jackpot on her first two films, SUGAR CANE ALLEY/’83 and this So. African anti-apartheid drama, made when that policy was still in effect.  And while she wasn’t able to maintain her early status (only a handful of further releases), this now overlooked sophomore effort lands nearly all its punches.  (Or does till she missteps with a couple of unforced melodramatic errors right at the end.)  It’s a tale of one BLACK family and one WHITE family from ‘70s Soweto where tensions are already high and injustice rains down unequally.  As we quickly see when the teenage son of the Black family gets caught up in a riot he’s running away from.  No matter for the authorities, he was on the scene, yes?  Seeking answers (alive?; injured?; dead and buried?), the boy’s father asks his employer (he’s gardener to Donald Sutherland’s Afrikaner prep-school teacher) for help.  And the film becomes a series of tests on Sutherland’s beliefs in his government & personal values as he becomes civilly radicalized by what he sees, the tragic consequences and watching his own family split in two over the question of equal justice.  The cast is unusually strong (Ronald Pickup, Michael Gambon, Susan Sarandon, among them), with Janet Suzman as Sutherland’s wife (witheringly disdainful as an apartheid true-believer); the great Zakes Mokae as a civil-rights lawyer with his hands tied; Sutherland’s two kids who take opposing sides.  And then there’s a phenomenal turn by Marlon Brando, returning to work after a decade’s early retirement, as the White lawyer (not an Afrikaner) who knows he’s tilting at the windmills of So. African courts.*  It’s tough to find nuanced drama when sides and issues are so clear-cut, not a lot of wiggle room for anyone’s conscience.  But Sutherland’s personal guilt at his own willful blindness till choices are forced upon him  does a lot of that work all on his own.  The film holding up better than you may have thought.  (NOTE:  Another Family Friendly label on a film definitely NOT for the Kiddies.  There are difficult/bloody scenes of torture.  But hard to imagine a better intro to this topic for teen discussion.)

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  Palcy works hard to keep her script from being too focused on Noble White Guy helps Impotent Black. Family tropes.  But they’re built into the storyline.  (Would this story get financed today?)  So, government police and military forces are well-stocked with Black members alongside their White superior officers, and in the village the Black cast is just as well characterized as the Whites living in restricted nabs.  But the split in footage remains a stubborn 60/40 tilt toward White screen time in dialogue & action. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *It’s a bit of a shock to realize that Brando, only 64 and big as a house, had been off the screen for a decade.  Yet even in a supporting role, he’s really working here.  Sadly, immediately after this, he sunk to phoning it in or parodies of earlier work.  Entertaining, but a waste compared to what he might have done.  His circle of advisors and confidants less friends than enablers.