Desonra

This austere movie based on a Booker prize winning novel be J.M.Coertzee will leave you breathless as the performances by Malkovich and his co star Jessica Haines are both very compelling.A story perhaps without a beginning or an ending and not a movie for the brainless, may suit more than one viewing to figure out all the symbolism here of post apartheid South Africa. Here we are asked how do you handle the injustices of life? aloof like Melanie, timid like Rosalind, with desperate acceptance like Lucy or with audacious dignity like David? There is a lot more to discover in this movie.The title is an enigma, where is the Disgrace? In life itself or In our inability to shape our futures with much effect? Well worth a watch but be prepared to be frustrated, angry and outraged by the displays of injustice paraded before you.

The motivations of this cast of characters is practically unfathomable. Playing against all reasonable expectations about human nature seems to be the point, here. This is an ugly, depressing movie about extremely neurotic people, none of whom elicit an ounce of sympathy. These people live in a society where "getting along" trumps pride and self respect. They are so world-weary, presumably from the black-white violence of their recent past that that will degrade and humiliate themselves just to maintain peace. It's not noble, it's not sensible, and it's very depressing. Why did the young black girl student, in the beginning of the story allow herself to be, essentially, raped by this odious troglodyte of a poetry teacher? She obviously didn't like him at all. Are we supposed to believe these blacks in South Africa have a slave mentality that prevents them from resisting a white man? I don't believe that for a moment. And how could the Malkovich character, so contrite about what he's done to the girl that he prostrates himself on the floor and apologizes to her mother—how does that attitude square with his seduction of the veterinarian woman without any regard for the feelings of her husband? And it goes on and on, all against a painful, callous background of dog euthanasia. Disgusting.

Both J.M. Coetzee's novel and its film adaptation leave their audience wanting more answers. Disgrace is a confronting and brutal tale of life in modern South Africa. The message is clear. There are no simple solutions.

Literary academic David Lurie's admiration of Byron seems to have formed his personal morality and his professional ethics.

His amorality leads to a doomed relationship that precipitates both work and identity crises. His alienation from university colleagues and students results in a refusal to defend his reputation or his professorial position.

He is not the victim of an old fool's infatuation but the arrogance of a serial Casanova. He quotes William Blake as his sole defence, "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." His retreat to his daughter's remote farm entangles their individual problems in the realities of life in the post apartheid era.

Director Steve Jacobs and screenwriter Anna Maria Monticelli continue their professional and personal partnership as co-producers. Their earlier collaboration on La spagnola in 2001 was another Australian production that is a minor gem.

John Malkovich's ability to convey complete self absorption and intense self doubt without dialogue make him an excellent choice for David. Relative newcomer Jessica Haines plays his daughter Lucy. Hers is a competent and moving performance. Eriq Ebouaney strikes the right tone in a difficult role as Petrus, the black farmer and her co-landholder.

Disgrace is an adaptation that more than does justice to the novel. Like the book, it does not sensationalise or over-dramatise this extremely difficult story. I had misgivings before the screening because the novel seemed so bleak. Lucy's compromise and David's acceptance of her decision offer such slim hope.

We are left with little doubt that this is an allegory for the issues facing modern multi-racial South Africa. Yet it is at the personal level that the film is most powerful.

Kevin Rennie Cinema Takes http://cinematakes.blogspot.com

Disgrace (2008)

Wow, what a troubled movie, and troubling. At the very very bottom, I think it's about accepting things that are horrible because you have to, but also about accepting things that you don't understand, also because you have to. That's a hard thing to do, and the lead character, a literature professor played by John Malkovich, is the kind of man who analyzes and understands with great nuance almost everything.

But things go wrong, and he is trying to help his grown lesbian daughter, who in her submissiveness all around, even to him, lets him fail through no fault of her own. The world of South Africa, where whites are bound to gradually lose their place, their land, their well being in a shift back to the original black inhabitants, is not easy to grasp, and the movie, based on J.M. Coetzee's novel, tries. Noble, frustrating, at times unconvincing, "Disgrace" is redeemed (as a movie) by the professor's seeming higher sense of values. We cling to his feelings for justice and for his daughter even as we find him personally despicable. "Disgrace" is also redeemed (as a concept) by the very strong currents of the book, dealing with what might be the most problematic issue of our times--how to get along, how to coexist and when not to, how to understand and accept and sometimes refuse to accept.

Great stuff, good movie.

I haven't read the award-winning book on which it is based, but Steve Jacob's film 'Disgrace' is a thoughtful and intelligent story about wrongdoing and reconciliation that quite explicitly functions as a microcosm of post-Apartheid South Africa and its relationship with its own past. In it, John Malkovich's disgraced, womanising and cynical ex-University professor comes to understand the value of offering contrition (when reparation is not obviously a feasible outcome) after his daughter is attacked and there is nothing corresponding to justice available for her. Indeed, she lives (in the remote highlands) where the very basis of power (which is ultimately needed to support justice) is undergoing a practical (though ugly) renegotiation, and the attack itself is seen (by her, though not by her father) in this context. The fact that both the professor and his daughter are, in their own ways, prickly and proud characters, makes the story more interesting; and the temptation for melodrama is resisted at every turn (indeed, while the most obviously dramatic scenes are being played out, the bigger event is occurring off-camera). It takes a lot of discipline to make a film this way; but there's a pay off - it feels real throughout, and makes you think by avoiding all the easy clichés.