Zwei Welten

This is a very good film with outstanding performances, particularly from Jodhi May and Barbara Hershey. The story of the Slovo-First family is very compelling and deserving of this fine treatment. As someone who has spent time in South Africa, both during and after Apartheid, I can attest to its authenticity.

The film works best, however, as a portrait of a troubled family. It carefully and truthfully depicts the agony of an adolescent girl who knows that her parents are trying to change her world for the better but at the expense of a normal life for her and her siblings. As Gillian Slovo so accurately stated, 'Here we were going off to Girl Guides while our parents were advocating the violent overthrow of our country's government.'

This film makes a powerful and moving, yet personal statement.

An important and recurring film trend in the 1980's was to deal with the apartheid in South Africa, which brought to the world a deep understanding of what the British were doing in that nation with their racial politics of segregation. The world got deeply involved with that, protested in every possible way and when the 1990's came, it was all over, South Africa was free again even though it took some time to reach peace and to develop politics for blacks and whites. The film trend had films like "Cry Freedom", "A Dry White Season" and this one directed by Chris Menges, best known as cinematographer of many classics. What makes "A World Apart" to differ from those besides the quality (the mentioned films are far better) is that it's a story that seemed designed to educate younger audiences about the apartheid reality. Commendable initiative but the ambition is so big that the movie falls short of accomplish something with such difficult task.

In the 1960's Johannesburg, the 13 year-old Molly (Jodhi May) tries to understand the world around her, a world of segregation where whites have everything and blacks don't have anything but following the racist laws created by the British where rights are denied, no public meetings are allowed, protests are deemed illegal and people are sent to jail to long sentences or die in suspicious circumstances. Those facts hit her closely when her father (Jeroen Krabbé) leaves the house to never return and her dedicated mother (Barbara Hershey) is arrested under a new law that allowed authorities to sent suspect people to jail for a 90-day period without trial. Molly's parents are leftist journalists who support the black South Africans in their quest for freedom and social rights. What follows is Molly's perspectives about this harsh reality as a young girl growing up, having to face life without the presence of her parents, taking care of her younger sisters, without any help from her friends who turned away from her when they heard about the mother's politics and imprisonment.

The film is good. The idea, though lacking and confusing, makes the film something worth seeing and almost important. However, Shawn Slovo's screenplay isn't all that great and neither deserving of the many accolades it received (a Bafta win included). I thought everything was taken too lightly, tension is built then fades away. Little is known about the activism of Molly's parents and Jeroen as the father has only one scene and we never get the chance to know why he was so important to the cause, and what really happened to him. It's the kind of script that ends up treating its adult audience as children, and if the concept was schemed to bring kids to it, then it failed a lot cause they don't offer a background neither a summary to the events taking place in South Africa and they'll feel lost.

Gladly, some scenes are very convincing, there's a good drama that sometimes unfolds with some bumps, those happen more because of the acting than the script itself. I know a lot of people are head over heels Jodhi as Molly but I frankly thought it was one of the strangest performances I've seen in a child actor. In quiet/moderate scenes she owns the role, and you cheers for her character, always wanting to see her overcome the obstacles life thrown at her. But when it's time to break down, cry and yell, or act different than her sweet almost naive way, she felt so forced, so over-the-top I couldn't relate with the girl anymore. Yes, Molly is supposed to be spoiled and ungrateful towards her caring mother (she truly believes she can change the world around her, to the point of enduring all those days in prison) but the sentimentalism she brings with that, just make her intolerable. Barbara Hershey carries the film in a good way, too bad the movie wasn't focused directly on her. Tim Roth's role is brief but it's a class act; David Suchet always deserves credit whenever he plays a villain, it's a subtle bad guy who appears to be good.

Can I say the movie is positive for the cause of education? Yes, I can. But if you really can show to your children the films I mentioned earlier, then move on with the history books, documentaries or even "Invictus", this one more contemporary. 7/10

Like "Cry Freedom" the previous year, "A World Apart" shows life in apartheid-era South Africa. This one tells the story of the Slovo family, who were trying to bring down apartheid (the names are changed in the movie). The father has had to flee the country after threats against him. The daughter (Jodhi May) is bullied in school, where her classmates call her father a "traitor". Finally, the mother (Barbara Hershey) is arrested. The daughter then truly begins to see the oppressive system through the eyes of the black population.

The whole story resembles that of the Rosenberg children, right down to the fate of the parents (Mrs. Slovo was assassinated in 1982). And it is so horrible to think that this vile agenda was in power for over forty years. There may be some things in life that we will never be able to get over.

Apartheid was just beginning to face its end in 1988 as this movie was being made, but it was still a few years away from disappearing completely. This movie is set in the 1960's - a time when apartheid was still enforced ruthlessly, and "A World Apart" gives us the story of a white but anti-apartheid family struggling against the regime. The story is shown largely through the eyes of Molly Roth (played by Jodhi May) - a 13 year old girl. As the movie begins her father is leaving South Africa to avoid arrest as a communist. Meanwhile, her mother is an anti-apartheid journalist. Molly finds herself increasingly ostracized by many of her white friends and their families because of her family's political views, and her mother is arrested by the government under a law that allowed for people to be held for 90 days without being charged so that they could be interrogated. The movie certainly makes the point that apartheid and the white regime were inhumane and brutal. It also - to me - made the point that apartheid sowed the seeds of its own destruction. Because of its ruthlessness, rather than stamping out opposition by frightening its opponents, it enraged them and emboldened them and ensured that there would be an ever increasing number of recruits for the anti- apartheid movement, a point made (I thought) by Molly's raised fist in a gesture of defiance in one of the last scenes of the movie.

In this movie, the central family is the Roth family - Gus and Diana and their children, most importantly Molly. In fact, the movie is really based on the story of Ruth First, who was the wife of South African Communist leader Joe Slovo. First did, indeed, find herself arrested under the 90 days law and actually served almost 120 days before being released. She was assassinated in the early 1980's, and this movie serves as a tribute to her, and was actually written by Shawn Slovo, Joe and Ruth's daughter. I found myself wondering if the title might be referring to Molly's (or Shawn's) experience of being in a world of her own - not completely fitting in with the black world even though she was a supporter of their cause, and obviously not fitting in with the white world, most of whom regarded her and her family with a mix of contempt and suspicion.

As apartheid movies go, this was somewhat unique in trying to tell the story through white eyes. To me, though, it didn't really succeed. While the regime (shown through its police and security forces) was ominous and ever-present, the movie seemed to lack intensity and treated the subject a little bit lightly. It's interesting, but to me it seemed to miss the mark. (6/10)

The first dramatic feature directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges tackles the injustices of Apartheid, without trivializing the issues or compromising the dramatic integrity of its script. Instead of adopting a gratuitous high moral tone, Menges concentrates first on telling a good story, following the growth to maturity of an adolescent (white) girl, already racially color blind, who feels neglected by her journalist/activist mother. The film might be criticized for once again using white protagonists to educate audiences about the black experience in South Africa, but it's a hollow complaint: writer Shawn Slovo based her script on personal experience, and the depth of its detail reflects her crystal-clear memories of growing up in Johannesburg during the early 1960s.

That the film succeeds more on a personal level in no way diminishes its political message, which unlike other anti-Apartheid dramas is never force-fed in condescending spoonfuls ("I know that already; stop treating me like a baby!" cries the frustrated young heroine after yet another lecture from mom). No easy solutions are offered, and the film ends in just another riot, suggesting with cautious optimism the hope for ultimate victory after what promises to be a long and difficult struggle.