Boesman and Lena

The acting in this movie was superb, but mixed with the truth about the condition of many Africans in South Africa made it heart wrenching. It was good that the writer isolated Boesman and Lena from others run from their homes, so we could share fully in their triumphs and defeats; the conflicts they shared as they grew together and apart. Worth seeing when you put the movie in it's proper context.

Baseman and Lena is not a typical Hollywood or American film production. Actually, it more closely resembles Bergman's Wild Strawberries than anything I've seen before, which makes sense because the film's director, John Berry, hails from Hollywood's Golden Age. Berry's style reflects the era of the 40s and 50s— Boesman and Lena was his last film, I believe.

The performances from Angela Basset and Danny Glover were outstanding—far beyond Oscar worthy. The story is rather comprehensive and nuanced, but the setting is mostly stagnant, which would lead some to mislabel the piece as simple and boring. Yes, it was a play originally, but the cast brings an energy and realism to the story that is difficult to put into words. If you appreciate the work of Angela Basset or Danny Glover, I think you would be fascinated with this movie. If you are a student, teacher, professor, or just like learning about post-colonial African history —specifically the socioeconomic disparities of South Africa—then this would be a good film to supplement a research paper or analysis of some kind.

My only word of advice would be to ignore the reviews, including mine. Just as an aside, I went through Loyola Marymount's film school, and was exposed to a bunch of directors who are considered avant-garde and hoity-toity today, such as Fellini, Rossellini, De Sica, Godard, Cacoyannis, Camus, Truffaut, Renoir, Tarkovsky, Eisenstein, Dreyer, Weir, Bergman, Capra, Welles, Ford, Kurosawa, Zhang Yimou, Kaurismaki, Townsend, Mallick, Luis Bunuel, and Spike Lee, to name a few. After all that, I can say that John Berry's Boesman and Lena is on par with all of those film directors work in terms of depth of storytelling, acting, and the level of catharsis the film provided. So I would just encourage you to watch the film with a fresh pair of eyes in the same way you would watch some fancy-pants classic film : )

BOSEMAN AND LENA (2000) **1/2 Danny Glover and Angela Bassett give excellent performances in

this adaptation of Athol Fugard's play about a hard-pressed upon

South African married couple sharing hardships and personal

demons after being ousted to the desert from their shantytown

coming to terms with their desperate (and disparate) situations.

Slow-moving and repetitive but still memorable especially for

Bassett's compassionate turn. The last film by well-respected director John Berry.

I did not read anything about the film before I watched it, by chance, last Saturday evening. And then, as I was watching it, I felt the misery of Lena and Boesman into my bones. I was so captivated by the acting and the tone and the filming that I listened only partially to the dialogues. My husband fell asleep soon after we went to bed and I was sleepless, under the impact of the film. I wanted to wake him up just to say:"if I would ever vote for an Oscar nomination, it would be for these two actors." I decided to wait until the next day. Then I read more about the film on IMDb, and was sad to learn that Mr. Berry died before the release of the film and that he had probably never seen the last version of his brilliant masterpiece. I still want to tell him that to me his film was a true independent film, in its concept and spirit. The actors are to be praised not only for their brilliant performance but for accepting a part with no shine, no showing off, well to the contrary, displaying the true image of human depression. Sad but poignant.

An absorbing (although repetitive and rather didactic) analysis of exploitation and despair in a situation where there is no way forward or up, where the attempts to make yourself feel better by violating and putting down whoever is below you seems to be the only option. But even here, in this desolate wasteland of lost dreams and no future, that does not work, and reaching out to something or someone to comfort and share with, a simple act of charity, gives some reward, even if it just makes the present bearable by reviving memories of the past.

Although there is little actual on screen violence, this is a harsh and brutal film about the small mindedness of oppression (politically and personally) that does not make for easy entertainment. Clearly based on a play, with a small cast, a broader more expansive relation to the general social and political environment would possibly have helped the film to reach a wider audience.