At one point in this movie the lead character, Nicholas Van der Swar (Kai Luke Brummer) is warned “Try to stay invisible” but there is nowhere to hide as director Oliver Hermanus slowly and powerfully strips individuality and intimacy away from him.
Conscripted at sixteen into the white supremacist army defending the apartheid of early 80s South Africa his first military experience is having his civilian clothing take from him. Naked with the other conscripts the process of removing their individuality, breaking them down into components of the military, and then rebuilding them as a weapon for the regime begins. Beatings, insults, casual cruelty, back breaking exertion and mindless machismo become the repetitive tedium of his daily life.
The dialogue of the movie is so spartan that it is incidents rather than conversations that drive forward the story. Like chapters in a book each incident compellingly defines character and situation. As a child Nicholas is publicly humiliated for looking at other boys in the showers creating a shame that hangs over him throughout life. In the trenches one wet night Dylan Stassen (Ryan De Villiers) shows him a wordless and secret act of tenderness under the pretext of keeping him warm and dry. On another occasion during a spin the bottle game where the conscripts are forced to box each other rather than kiss he is forced into a public fist fight with the same guy who showed him that kindness.
The word moffie, meaning faggot in Afrikaans, suffocates the air around Nicholas. Two conscripts are caught in a tryst together and they are beaten and shipped off to Ward 22, the army psychiatric unit where the mentally damaged get thrown like trash. Dylan disappears from the dorm one weekend and only some risky detective work from Nicholas reveals that is where he has ended up as well.
The choice to pare back the movie to its emotional bones means a lot is absent. Despite the fact that his conscription is to defend apartheid that politics does not feature as part of the story in anything but an incidental way. That is not the story that is being told. This is a film about the toxic masculinity of the army crushing the individuality of those who join it. Do not go expecting an exploration of the horrors of apartheid as the moral absence will be frustrating.
The story that is told, however, is a powerful piece of cinema. The director’s choices of what to show to compensate for the incidental nature of the dialogue is flawless. Brummer was able to portray deep wounds without appearing weak. It’s a beautiful movie to look at whose visual polish still feels realistic. Particularly the soundtrack is a triumph going from sinister thrusting cellos that promise no happy endings, through to baroque organs operatically played for dramatic high points and a slightly porny 70s disco funk that surrounded the brief kissing scenes. Even though this film is stripped to the essentials it delivers on all the senses
Review by Andrew HebdenQueerguru Contributing Editor ANDREW HEBDEN is a MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES graduate spending his career between London, Beijing and NYC as an expert in media and social trends. As part of the expanding minimalist FIRE movement he recently returned to the UK and lives in Soho. He devotes as much time as possible to the movies, theatre and the gym. His favorite thing is to try something (anything) new every day.
Labels: 2020, coming out, drama, South African
