It is becoming increasingly popular these days to discuss the once hidden subject of racism, but to have two big movies on the subject out at the same time is quite something, and both ready to compete for the Academy Awards. They are of course the much awaited 'Mandela - Long Walk to Freedom', and 'Twelve Years a Slave', a popular choice for many as Best Movie.
I have just emerged, exhausted, from a viewing of the above film, with an award winning performance by English actor Idris Elba, as Nelson Mandela. The life of Mandela is such an epic that I was amazed how much they could condense into two hours, including quite a study of his relationship with Winnie, who I recently heard was not favoured at all in his will. The history of South Africa is such a recent one, and the depiction of the mass killing of hundreds of blacks at Sharpeville in 1961 was still keen in my memory. It is an important movie and certainly deserves to win awards in a few categories. I'd give it four stars.
Two more award possibilities in 'Slave'.
A couple of hundred years earlier and we have the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man kidnapped and held illegally as a slave in the south for twelve years.
This is another awful and true story of white man's perceived dominance over the black race. Both male leads are worthy of mention, Solomon played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and his nemesis played by my favourite Irish actor Michael Fassbender. Producer Brad Pitt plays a small role as the abolitionist Canadian who eventually effects the freeing of Solomon, but the post-script says that he never was given justice over the horrific affair. Such was the racist state of life in the US before the abolition of slavery. The white race is guilty of so much in its historical maltreatment of his black brothers and sisters and we are still on this road to equality even with a supposed radical black President in Barack Obama.
Another must-see movie however, also four stars.
Below,Mandela's courtship of Winnie
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