Winnie

This biopic about the first wife of iconic and legendary South African statesman and apartheid adversary Nelson Mandela, stars Academy Award winning actress Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) as the title character who was raised in a strict, rural upbringing with a schoolteacher father who was disappointed with the fact that she was his sixth daughter. Winnie worked hard to win his approval and when she was of age she moved to the city to pursue medical school -- which was unusual in a sexist, apartheid South Africa. It was here that she met (and almost reluctantly) fell in love with the young political revolutionary Mandela (Terrence Howard - Hustle & Flow) who was already an "enemy" of the white government for believing in equality.

The film is rather shaky in that it doesn't really appear to know how it wants to portray Winnie and while an Oscar-winner (in a good performance with one STELLAR, knockout scene), Hudson does appear to have a limited acting range. After Nelson is arrested and incarcerated, Winnie also faces some horrible and unjust, inhumane abuses at the hands of the South African government. Once she is freed she attempts to carry his mantle but does so with some very questionable actions that have today tainted her legacy.

The film perhaps wants to be overly honest but in doing so Winnie doesn't come across as a winning figure for such a biopic. She is quite polarizing and the "hero tone" the film presents is rather conflicting. This could possibly all be intentional on the filmmaker's part.

Different time ... different place. She was strong and she was not broken and she did NOT give up. Like her or not -- she was no Nelson -- but I wish this movie had been better.

I was surprised at the negative tone of other reviews. I thought this was an excellent piece of work --- acting --- production --- accuracy. I wondered whether it was going to glamourize Mandella with an unrealistically positive spin. But no, it does a good job of illustrating the unfortunate turn her life took in the later years of the South African struggle. She ended up as a vindictive,foul mouthed, autocratic drunk. But you understand how that came to be after her long ordeal, which was powerfully portrayed. I also was surprised to find that this was largely a Canadian production. It had none of the pretentious unoriginality that marks so many Canadian films, especially those done for Canadian cable television. It was believable, watchable and informative!

I am presently watching this movie at the moment. I must say I am extremely surprised at the flawed costuming of this project. This is a movie chronicling the life of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, a woman who was born in 1936. Yet from the very start of the movie(which starts at her birth), you notice immediately that they lost it on the costumes they used as they do not depict the kind and quality of clothing worn in a 1936 South African village. For one the clothing used are really really bright and very 2011 fashionable. Regarding the styling, you can clearly tell that they probably could not produce them that way back then. They also look too bright and flashy much like modern apparel. In certain scenes you see that the ties worn by the guards or police officers looking really modern day and therefore really makes you struggle to believe the events were actually occurring when the acting tells you they were. Talk about the wedding dress used in Winnie's wedding, it just looks out of place time-wise. So even though the acting is good, I feel that the strength of the acting was much suppressed by this flaw. It really would have been better if they had down toned the colors a bit but unfortunately they did not.

After watching movie Winnie Madikizela Mandela, I wondered how much Winnie, the main character, narrated on this movie about herself. Winnie was referred to as the Mother of the Nation, she was statues and beautiful, very intelligent and warrior spirited. Yet so much was left out about her diplomacy, about how she traveled around the world from country to country to gain world support for the release of her husband Nelson Mandela. The greatness of the woman was laminated to half her greatness in this movie. I remember when Winnie came to United States to meet to appeal the world be aware of apartheid and unjust imprisonment of many South Africans under apartheid. People were naming their children after Winnie and Nelson because of her image, which I must mention was distained. The population of South Africa including Nelson are under the influence of apartheid also Stokholm AND Helsinki syndromes.

I viewed this at the Toronto International Film Festival where it premiered without a final soundtrack and with the end credits missing. But that's not what's important. Sadly, Winnie bites off more than it can chew due to weak, amateurish writing and clichéd action scenes, choppy story-telling and most of all, the casting of Jennifer Hudson, who is embarrassingly over her head as the love of Mandela's life. The larger historical,political and cultural context of this epic tale is missing, and although the basic 'facts' are there, it comes across as lifeless, wooden, artificial and often cloyingly sentimental. There are some bad choices in the story-telling in the interest of Hollywoodizing the saga for audiences who may not be knowledgeable about South African history or realities. Terrence Howard tries hard against the challenges of a lousy script and heavy-handed direction, and ages brilliantly as Mandela. He can't, single-handedly, save the film, so at the moment, the entire project feels as if it's headed straight to DVD.