Paljas

A simple but brilliant storyline captured by what must be a vastly talented director. Wonderful camerawork and good acting. This is a thorough, deserving and most enjoyable film. It will no doubt remain a gem in the archives of the art-film.

Katinka Heyns is one of South Africa's finest filmmakers, and her 1998 film "Paljas" is an enchanting, if drawn-out, fable of hope overcoming prejudice. Set in the heartland of the Karoo (the lunar semi-desert that sprawls across South Africa's interior) it chronicles the tale of the Afrikaans-speaking Macdonald family whose conservative beliefs are thrown into turmoil when a touring circus pays their isolated village a visit. ("Paljas" is an Afrikaans word that doesn't quite translate into English, but denotes "enchantment".)

Heyns' film is remarkable for its warm yet unaffected simplicity. Paljas is essentially a domestic drama and Heyns assembled a superlative cast of local actors to effect this in a beautifully understated way. Marius Weyers is excellent as the long-suffering, widowed patriarch, and there are some astonishing set-pieces between the family members. The Karoo landscape is beautifully shot and utilized perfectly, as it quietly undulates between forbidding wasteland and Norman Rockwellian heartland.

Although the film has its faults (it would have benefited from some judicious editing) there are moments of pure poetry, and Paljas should be essential viewing for any connoisseur of independent/foreign film. One only hopes that we will be seeing more of Heyns' work in the future, and, indeed, better distribution for this hard-to-come-by screen gem.

Probably one of the best films to come out of South Africa. The story documents the lives of an Afrikaans railway worker and his family in the remote countryside of the Karoo. Their humdrum lives are turned around by the arrival of a travelling circus, revealing to them the existence of a much bigger world out there. The film sympathetically captures a specific side of Afrikaans small-town life that isn't always fairly represented by filmdom.

Refreshing to see that someone had the brains to put good money behind a good movie in a country that isn't known for its cinema endeavours. I felt proud when I saw this movie. Brilliant acting from a cast you can see they love what they do.

I would love to know in which country this movie was released and what other people thought. It was entered for best foreign movie at the Oscars in (I think) 97, but it didn't get nominated, one of the reasons being that the lengthy version (not the well edited one that got to the big screen) was submitted.

If you can find this movie, watch and enjoy.

The greatest feature to emerge thus far from South Africa (since 1994) is Katinka Heyns's Paljas. The narrative occurs in the 1960s, when poverty amongst Afrikaners was a serious problem and the South African Railway a key mechanism in Afrikaner affirmative action. This excellent Afrikaans language drama follows the deterioration of an Afrikaner family isolated and shunned in the small community of Toorwater. Nothing seems to happen. Then a circus train loses its way and comes to rest in Toorwater, and a mysterious clown brings fresh magic to the stagnating family, but he also poses a threat to the rest of the community. Heyns brilliantly succeeds in creating a metaphor for the Afrikaner family's turbulent emotional, cultural and ideological journey from the darkness of apartheid back into the light of post-apartheid reconciliation (famililial, cultural and political).