It was kind of fitting that not long after returning from South Africa and missing out on visiting one of the key historical attractions, Robben Island, that I would return to the UK and there would be a movie that pretty much delivered the experience into my lap.
Based on the memoirs of Nelson Mandela’s prison guard, James Gregory, Goodbye Bafana brings to the screen Gregory’s story and how his life as a racist white man was changed for the good by his unlikely friendship by this amazing man. Unfortunately the fact that the book was supposedly fraudulent does take away somewhat the impact of the message.
The movie takes a very softly softly approach to the issue of apartheid and uses James Gregory as a kind of vessel to represent the change in the feelings of the South African nation towards the regime throughout Nelson Mandela’s incarceration. Although there are snapshots of violence and the riots interpersed throughout the movie, its focus was less on this visual aspect of apartheid and more the manifestation of racism in men’s thoughts and feelings. Interestingly, except for the change that occurs towards the end of the movie, the “white” man really is painted as the villain and the “black” man the hero with no real gray in between.
Although this softly softly technique allowed the movie to come across as sincere and moving, it did also make it slightly dull. It felt like we were simply working our way through the life of James Gregory to the inevitable conclusion and whilst it was a feel-good end the journey made us feel like it was all almost too good to be true.
Been to Robben island and the experience there is pretty much like how you describe it in this posting… a definite bias towards the bad ‘white’ man, which to be fair is probably true to a large degree, but people forget what Mandela actually did in his past. He was not a saint all his life and although I recognise his amazing achievements after his release, I can’t help but feel people conveniently forget his atrocities in the past, hence the reason for his imprisonment.
Oh yea. I forgot to mention that the treatment of Mandela in the movie was just as you said – he was painted as a saint without any sins which I thought made the movie slightly unbalanced.
I felt that the film jumped forward in years too much and really missed the reasons behind Gregory’s change of heart. One minute he hates Mandela and co, the next he is his best friend. Other than his reading the Freedon Charter (which seemed to take him 20+ years to finish!), we had no reasons behind this.