Black Butterflies

A middle aged writer rescues a young woman from drowning near the shores of South Africa. Although he is much older, they fall in love right there and then and soon some obvious complications ensue. There is hardly a likable or interesting character in this wandering historical drama about the poet Ingrid Jonker (Carice van Houten). It deals primarily with the mentally troubled writer and her precarious relationships with men, including her father (Rutger Hauer) who is a member of the apartheid regime she strongly opposes.

The film never picks up any speed and the absence of a discernible plot line or a compelling narrative makes for a very pallid viewing experience. Hauers script is particularly one-note but the same could be said of van Houten who seemed to be out of her depth in the role of a frustrated and depressed young woman trying to get her voice heard through rebellious poetry. Liam Cunningham fares a lot better as one of the two love interests and produces the only sympathetic character of the film.

Butterflies tries to show us the hardship of the poet Ingrid Jonker in the 50's and 60's in South Africa; her social and mental struggles and the clashes with her family. Striving for equality between the races, she finds herself opposed to her father who heads up a government censorship board.

This could have been a good backdrop for some decent drama and the portrayal of a country raped by apartheid. But besides shoving an unlikable protagonist down our throats (Jonker), the film offered very little in the way of plot and dialog. What was presented in stead was a 90 minute volley of uneasy situations with Jonker interacting with characters who turned up whenever the script required it without a plot-inspired narrative flow.

The connections to her surrounding characters are never really explored and the development of situations felt awkwardly and needlessly rushed. The interactions between Jonker and her father for example, which should have been key scenes in the film, lacked any additional purpose besides the very obvious. Screenwriter Greg Latter, who did much better when he wrote the screenplay for the 2007 movie Forgiveness, also set in South Africa, really missed the mark here by only serving up predictable dialog for a historical drama that already lacked a discernible outline.

Neither van Houten nor Hauer were particularly convincing in their roles and the acting by Liam Cunningham made their performances pale in comparison. But it was most of all van Houten who clearly wasn't up to the task. Her crass Dutch accent was particularly annoying, especially considering how easy it should be for a Dutch actress to get the S.A. accent right. Her acting also felt a bit labored at times which was compounded by her role mostly being fed dramatic clichés.

There's a good soundtrack however, accompanying some very beautiful imagery but the movie as a whole is a rather lackluster and exasperating watch.

45/100

BLACK BUTTERFLIES is a biographical drama based on the life of Ingrid Jonker. For those who are unfamiliar with this poet the following description my aid in the appreciation of this film: 'Ingrid Jonker (19 September 1933 - 19 July 1965) was a South African poet. Although she wrote in Afrikaans, her poems have been widely translated into other languages. Ingrid Jonker has reached iconic status in South Africa and is often called the South African Sylvia Plath, owing to the intensity of her work and the tragic course of her turbulent life. Her work has also been compared to that of Anne Sexton.' Greg Latter has written the screenplay that attempts to give us all the facets of this enigmatic personality and the film is directed by Paula van der Oest. It is obviously an act of love.

We meet Ingrid and her sister Anna as children, poor, without shoes, and taken to the home of their Apartheid father Abraham Jonker (Rutger Hauer) the Minister of Censorship for the parliament of South Africa. As Ingrid (Carice van Houten) matures she becomes a beautiful, but impetuous young poet, feeling abandoned, blaming others, promiscuous, escaping in excessive drinking too much in order to feel safe and able to cope, and becoming overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, which characterize some common personality disorders. At her father's demand she married Pieter, has a daughter by him, and leaves him because she feels trapped. While swimming in the ocean she nearly drowns but is saved by writer Jack Cope (Liam Cunningham) - this act results in a love relationship and despite Jack's decaying marriage they plan to live together. They both support the young South African poet Nkos (Thamsanqua Mbongo) and aid his escape form South Africa to Europe in hopes of finding freedom to write. Ingrid's and Jack's relationship is passionate and stormy: Ingrid has affairs simply because she has the freedom of mind to do so, and the affair with one Eugene Maritz (Nicholas Pauling), a married man, drives Jack away. Ingrid aborts the child she conceived with Jack (Jack does not know this) and eventually does the same with a child conceived with Eugene. All the while Ingrid is suffering form her inner demons but at the same time becoming more aware of the cruelty of Apartheid. Her writings reflect these feelings and are censored by her father. Yet her greatest collection of poems about the Apartheid are published despite her father's wishes and her father disowns her for being a wasted 'slut.' Ingrid's increasingly bizarre behavior results in several psychiatric hospitalizations and suicide attempts and she goes to Paris where she is treated with electroconvulsive therapy. The treatment calms her but robs her of the ability to write poetry and during the night of 19 July 1965, Jonker went to the beach at Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town where she walked into the sea and committed suicide by drowning.

Carice van Houten, Liam Cunningham, and Rutger Hauer offer brilliant performances and the support cast is strong - Candice D'Arcy as Ingrid's sister Anna, Grant Swanby as Jan Rabie, and Graham Clarke as Jack's closest mate Uys Krige. During the film's credits we hear Nelson Mandela reading Ingrid's prize winning poem 'The Dead Child of Nyanga', probably the most important poem to influence the end of Apartheid.

She searched for a home, she searched for love. Confronted by Apartheid and a father who was Minister of censorship. With men like Jack Cope and Andre Brink she found much love, but no home. In his first speech to the South African Parliament Nelson Mandela read her poem "The Dead Child of Nyanga" and addresses her as one of the finest poets of South Africa. The child is not dead The child lifts his fists against his mother Who shouts Afrika ! shouts the breath Of freedom and the veld In the locations of the cordoned heart

The child lifts his fists against his father in the march of the generations who shouts Afrika ! shout the breath of righteousness and blood i n the streets of his embattled pride

The child is not dead not at Langa nor at Nyanga not at Orlando nor at Sharpeville nor at the police station at Philippi where he lies with a bullet through his brain

The child is the dark shadow of the soldiers on guard with rifles Saracens and batons the child is present at all assemblies and law-givings the child peers through the windows of houses and into the hearts of mothers this child who just wanted to play in the sun at Nyanga is everywhere the child grown to a man treks through all Africa

the child grown into a giant journeys through the whole world Without a pass

This is a courageous and deeply moving film about a great poet. Grady Harp, April 12

"Black Butterflies", a biographical drama imagining the life and times of famed Afrikaner poet Ingrid Jonker (played with a distracting non-afrikaans accent by Carice van Houten), ventures through uneasy territory of a manic-depressive egocentric leech, who happens per chance to also be a brilliant poet. Focused mainly around her tentative affair with acclaimed novelist Jack Cope (Liam Cunningham), it also features subplots regarding her promiscuous behaviour and romance with Eugene Maritz (Nicholas Pauling), de facto a cryptic Andre Brink, and her conflicted relationship with her father Abraham Jonker (Rutger Hauer), who headed the censorship department of the Apartheid government.

Through her tribulations (without much trials) the audience in swept into the demented and self-absorbed world of the poet with destructive tendencies and little more than a fleeting regard for anything outside of her own virtual obsessions and hyperbolized melodrama. Director Paula van der Oest and scriptwriter Greg Latter leave little sympathy for Ingrid Jonker, portraying her as compulsive, impulsive, bordering on alcoholic, accusatory in nature, morally repugnant with overwhelming inclinations towards destroying everything around her during her turbulent emotional whirlwinds, including overwhelming contemptuous disregard towards her own child. Nonetheless Ingrid remains fascinating and magnetic as a poet epitomised by her internal contradictions and fragility. If this movie was aimed at being an elegy towards the revered writer, than sadly it has failed. But as a character study of a troubled and turbulent individual, which by teasing brilliance ends up spiralling into despair and manic annihilation, it is a captivating experience.

Despite her obvious issues with keeping an accent and the resulting meandering articulation Carice van Houten still manages to convey the obsessive Ingrid with her crippling character disorders. Nonetheless, despite much more limited screen time, she is indiscriminately overshadowed by Liam Cunningham and Rutger Hauer, who come en force in their respective roles. Nonetheless, script-wise the interactions between father and daughter feel dauntlessly underlined, not following through on the key importance of this relationship to Jonker's writings. Filtered through some brilliant cinematography and restrained direction with a touch of poetic artistry, the overall experience was extremely enticing, even if the divisive character of Ingrid Jonker is bound to push all the wrong buttons for many viewers.

Black butterfly is a dark twisted thriller. Neither another bland biopic about a self distractive artist nor an historical scrapbook about a country in the grip of slavery. Slavery stems deep in South Africa especially during apartheid and its just too twisted but reveals how people lived in essense. Having to change the world around her was hard bit something that was necessary. Though there was a heavy price that came with having to change the world around her. A heavy price was indeed paid for her passion but the movie is really worth watching. I enjoyed every moment of the movie. Thank you.