Petr-10

Originally, many years ago, I gave the film 6 out of 10. I was upset. Today, I can block my irritation and be more fair.

They got the uniforms wrong, they got the Czech language badly wrong everywhere. They even abused our national anthem. To repeat that Pilsen is in Czechoslovakia might be politically correct but irritating, too. If they did not want to call it Protektorat, they should have said "occupied Czechoslovakia".

And the main idea is wrong, Hitler would not allow the use of chemical weapons. He was scared of them because he himself was poisoned on the front. He was not a coward in WWI, on the contrary, he earned the iron cross.

Pity. Still 7 out of 10.

This is one of the most famous South African films. And yet, it is not a comedy like most of our current films, nor it is a film against apartheid. Apartheid is taken for granted by everyone in the film, with a possible exception of an expatriate black pastor who, thoroughly westernized, appears only very briefly at the beginning of the film.

The greatest strength of the film is that it rings true. All characters, while thinking and acting in so many different ways, are believable to anyone who lived in South Africa. Each of them has his inner truth. The acting is superb, there is not a single false note. The direction is straightforward, its goal is to document the story, it does not aspire to more. There is no need to show off, if the sea is beautiful, yes, it is beautiful but it is there only because it has its part to play. The camera does self-indulge in a way which might have felt dated even in 1969 (scenes of a young couple in love) but it's easy to forgive.

There are a few sentences in Afrikaans but, again, this has its function and should not worry anybody.

One of the young lovers (a minor role) is played by very young Katinka Heyns who, besides her excellent directing, is also well known in South Africa as an actress. To quote The National Television & Video Association of South Africa:

"Katinka Heyns is an acclaimed actress, director and producer who first won the collective heart of South Africa as an actress in films such as "Katrina" and in the television series "Willem". She is honoured for work such as her first feature film "Fiela se Kind" and its strong anti-apartheid statement, as well as "Die storie van Klara Viljee", a feminist film supporting the rights of female individuals. Her feature film "Paljas" was the first South African film to be accepted as an entry in the Oscar Awards category for "Best Foreign Film"."

Possibly with the help of her blond and fair-skinned son, Katrina has been accepted as a white person and she wants to stay that way and be happy. Sure, she loves her dying mother who lives in a village, and her brother and all the others but would not dream of returning to her coloured (mixed race in South Africa) village because living like a white person in town "is a different life!"

She wants her son, Paul, to feel the same way. Paul does not even know that he is coloured. But he is a doctor and is prepared to serve where he is most needed and, in his profession, he is remarkably colour-blind. This is a tragic story and almost everybody suffers one way or another in the film, and Paul gets his share. Despite the tragedy in the air, the film manages to avoid being depressing or unpleasant. It also keeps your attention all the time.

Alec Treveyllan is a white pastor who comes with a dark secret. Katrina could help him if she did not have her own deception to handle. In the meantime, he is miserable, lonely and vulnerable. Does he really love her (and her songs - truly beautiful!) or does he just need her strength?

Adam September is a coloured ideologist of apartheid. He does not want to be white, he wants to uplift his own people. He also wants to protect his sister Katrina who does not want to be protected...

An interesting thought comes to mind: what if coloureds of today are much darker than in 1969? Katrinas and Pauls acted as a sort of natural selection - weeding out white man's genes from the coloured community! At the same time, under apartheid, the area in and around Cape Town was reserved to whites and coloureds - then guess who the blacks who managed to settle in the Cape pretended to be?

Housing was a major problem in Czechoslovakia. If you had a flat, you were OK, the rent was controlled and thus relatively cheap, but if you did not, you had to try very hard to get one. If you moved out or died and a relative was not already registered as living with you, the flat might be lost! One way for ordinary people who needed to move was to swap flats.

This film takes this idea to the extreme: Why not move a number of households in a circular fashion at the same time? Of course, it requires a lot of organizing and a lot of goodwill on all sides. Anything can go wrong and it does! What if somebody changes his mind, the whole scheme collapses!

Quite an easy way to make a comedy. Despite efforts by some excellent actors, this one is not the greatest.