“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom,” like many biographical
films, would have made a better mini-series. There’s so much crammed into this
139-minute movie that it often leaps from one event to the next too swiftly to
make much of an emotional impact. Touching only briefly on Mandela’s childhood
in a tiny village, it races quickly to his time in the early 40s as an attorney
in Johannesburg and moves swiftly to the moment he becomes disillusioned with
the effectiveness of peaceful protests against the increasingly repressive
white government. In response he and his colleagues in the African National
Congress, a liberation movement demanding equal rights for blacks, grow more
militant and are forced into hiding. Ultimately, Mandela is caught and
sentenced to life in imprison.
Idris Elba is a good choice to play Mandela: He is both physical
and thoughtful, a man of passion who comes to understand the need for
practicality. As his fiery second wife Winnie, a revolutionary in her own
right, Naomie Harris comes close to stealing the movie. Oppressed, imprisoned,
humiliated, she only grows angrier and more militant as the years pass. Upon
his release after 27 years in prison, Mandela espouses a more peaceful
solution, while Winnie continues to support violence in the name of change.
That their complicated relationship is only touched upon is one of the many
problems with the movie. Superior acting aside, “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
does not have the emotional impact that it should. 12/20/13
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