An American reporter and an Afrikaans poet meet and fall in love while covering South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.
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People are voting emotionally.
Great Film overall
This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.
Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
I am amazed to see the negative review this film got in North America. It is a wonderful film. The interpretation is excellent, very moving. Direction achieves its target very efficiently, without lengths. What better message than that of Love, that of seeking reconciliation? Force and violence never came to anything lasting. Admittedly, it very often took force and struggle and blood to achieve peace. But it has never lasted otherwise than by the love of man, the type of love which made us educate, cultivate, teach people everything we knew so that they would go even further in this direction, along this work, and so that by increasing human brotherhood love, we could achieve a more calm, more live-able, more fertile society, with a future still ahead. I tip my hat to the general attitude of the black people of South Africa, who has followed the lead of Mandela to see an end of war in the reconciliation process, an end to hatred, an end to insecurity, to this imaginary threat which used to inflame the minds contagiously and drove men to kill each other. It is difficult to bring a better message to the audience of a film. Very brilliant screenplay. Absolutely worth seeing. And I would add that one can see in that message the old axiom: it is not enough to be honest and to act according to his faith, beliefs, convictions; this attitude is just an elementary basics; what is needed is to act according to truth; and if one wants to know where the truth lies: it's what leads to more life, the solution that produces the most life, not one that respects one's personal beliefs, it would be much too easy ...
In My Country takes a hugely interesting, complex topic - South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission, and pushes it into the background of a rather formulaic and morally dubious love story between two reporters. The characterisation of the both Afrikaaners and the black South Africans is wooden and at times one-dimensional. The word Ubuntu is bandied around but I didn't think the film explored the concept as well as it could have done, I certainly didn't come away from it with a feeling I understood the idea. To my mind Red Dust is the better film, with a much greater depth in terms of plot.On the plus side the score of In My Country is very good, senzenina is a haunting theme throughout the whole film, the ambiguity over whether it refers to the actions of the apartheid government or the release of so many of those who committed those acts is very interesting.
I am not a big fan of romances, but in this case I gave it a try because of director John Boorman ["Excalibur," "The Emerald Forest," "Hope & Glory, "Deliverance"] and actors Samuel L. Jackson ["Coach Carter," "Star Wars: Episodes 2 & 3," "The Red Violin"] and Juliette Binoche ["Chocolat," "The English Patient," and the 1992 remake of "Wuthering Heights"].This film was in the better half of Boorman's, while Jackson and Binoche gave top-notch performances. The supporting role of Dumi, played by Menzi Ngubane was excellent, as he acted both as foil and antagonist between the couple.I think the weakest elements of this film are in screenwriter Ann Peacock's dialogue and in the construction of the Anna Malan and brother Boetie characters. The first for taking on just a little too much burden of responsibility, especially in one somewhat uncharacteristic scene at one of the hearings with a particularly gory testimony, and the latter for being incomplete when a key development occurs that should have played more into the storyline and into Anna's reactions.From what I've heard about the book by Antje Krog, I can understand why anyone who had read it before seeing this movie might be disappointed, but it was certainly clear to me by the marketing that this was a romance and not a cinematic litany of the horrors of Apartheid.Given the turbulent background of Apartheid and the South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission proceedings, along with other clues, I was also expecting this to be an adversaries-fall-in-love story, which is the type of romance that I like the most. The collective incidents which drive Anna and Langston together are neither contrived or turgid, and fall comfortably in between, especially because they are juxtaposed with events based in reality. There is one most significant turn at one of the hearings, which, given it is true, would bring any two adversaries together, in peace if not in love.I don't want to give away anything about the extent of their romance, except to say that how it ended up was a pleasant surprise and quite satisfactory. I wish I could recommend two other good romances that end so similarly and satisfactorily, but I would give away the surprise.This film is certainly worth a rental or two, worth showing to friends, but I suppose the disturbing nature of the background events might keep some people from buying it for their home library, but if you bought a copy of "American History X," I think you might want to buy this one.
Director John Boorman has taken on a weighty and incendiary subject, much like Terry George's recent take on genocide in "Hotel Rwanda." Although "In My Country" is set post-Apartheid, it still covers a hot topic: what do you do with the people that are to blame when a genocide occurs? President Nelson Mandela formed a commission to get at the truth and in return for that information he was offering amnesty for those government officers that were only 'following orders'. An amazing precedent to say the least.However, director Boorman has chosen to balance the emotional testimony of the victims with a sometimes humorous side-story involving an American journalist, played by the great Samuel L. Jackson ("Coach Carter") and a local 'white' radio reporter, played by the equally great Juliette Binoche ("The English Patient").Certainly, a story of this import deserves a documentary but as it stands, this is as close as any American will ever get to this story since many newspapers buried it when it originally occurred. Racism is an ugly thing, but forgiveness is a beautiful thing and this movie balances the two in an effective and entertaining manner.Check this one out, especially if you are a fan of "Hotel Rwanda" and hearing the 'truth' for a change.