Screenwriter William Nicholson made a mistake: his selection of episodes from Mandela's biography, his reworking of them, did not turn Mandela into an active character. We only see the result, what he did, but not the process, nor how he did it. After Mandela was sentenced to life in prison, the first thought that popped up was to "apply to wear trousers in order to gain a minimum respect", but he did nothing and the trousers were issued.
Like trousers, black freedom seems to have fallen from the sky out of nowhere. About a third of the way through the film, Mandela is arrested and jailed, and he is largely idle for the other third until he negotiates with the government. The protests outside the prison intensified, but apart from using his name, he had nothing to do with him. Instead, his wife became the backbone of the movement. This is the most passive part of the protagonist, and at the same time the most dreary of the film.
There has been only one apparent government mischief, the Sharpewell massacre in 1960, when South African police opened fire on unarmed parades. The massacre turned a nonviolent resistance of people of color into a violent movement. In the following time, the director expressed the struggle between the two forces through the images of the indignant parade and scenes of violence. These successive scenes became synonymous, and we saw neither more brutality by the government nor the growth of black power. But in this case, the government released Mandela.
Why? This can only be understood as a shift in the government's own attitudes toward blacks, although the film doesn't spend a minute or a second showing that shift. Or, the government is fed up with this protracted confrontation. This is ridiculous: in a biographical film featuring a revolutionary leader, it is the object of the revolution that is actually put into action to make the revolution a success. Before his release, Mandela stressed to the president that his freedoms were his own, not granted by the government. This truth is so true that it is reduced to an empty slogan.
Because the character is not motivated enough, the screenwriter tries to make every line he speaks impassioned, whether it's to his wife or to his people. This is not uncommon in mediocre revolutionary literature and art. What we see are fists waving and what we hear is "revolution", "freedom", "resistance", but not the insight, persuasion and decisiveness of a great leader. Can a loud voice bring in advocates? Lead actor Idris Elba's deliberate imitation of the way Mandela speaks further reduces the character's credibility.
For all these reasons, Mandela's occasional moments of initiative are the film's dazzling moments. At the beginning of the film, although the young Mandela has a family and a business, he is everywhere, and he does not feel any guilt for it. This gives us an insight into his sentiments and views on marriage. On the eve of his release, in the face of the government asking him to give up violence in exchange, Mandela proposed in the manifesto that the government should give up violence first and throw the responsibility on the other side, thus showing the wisdom and uncompromising attitude of a statesman. .
These two passages work because they follow the playwright principle of putting the character in a difficult situation and then letting him get out of it by his own efforts. In this way, it can not only make the audience firmly attracted by the contradictions and conflicts, but also make the characters more vivid and three-dimensional. Unfortunately, such moments are too few. Mandela's ups and downs of life, through the joint efforts of the writer and director, finally turned into a story of waves.
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