Review: Cry Freedom

Kevin Kline stars as Donald Woods, the chief editor of liberal South African newspaper Daily Dispatch who gets involved in the case of his black activist friend Steve Biko (an Oscar-nominated Denzel Washington). For his digging into the case and wanting to have a book published about it, Woods finds himself and his family in grave danger and needing to flee the country. John Thaw plays a local Minister for Justice, Penelope Wilton is Woods’ wife, Zakes Mokae makes his obligatory appearance as an African minister, Aussie actor John Hargreaves plays a colleague/mate of Woods, and Josette Simon plays a passionate doctor who was a close associate of Biko’s.

 

Overlong but solid Apartheid drama from 1987 by Sir Richard Attenborough (whose “Gandhi” was a masterpiece) was one of Denzel Washington’s first real showings in cinema. While his forgettable film debut “Carbon Copy” showed glimmers of his talent, this film definitely would’ve had people at the time sit up and take notice of him. He was remarkably assured very early on here in his film career. He’s not in the film for very long – the film isn’t focussed on him nor is it meant to be – but when he’s on screen, he’s magnetic. He also nails his black South African accent, something he clearly worked hard on.

 

The bulk of the film isn’t really about Denzel’s Steve Biko, but about white South African journalist Donald Woods, played by American actor Kevin Kline. Make no mistake though, Biko is the more interesting role by far. As Woods, Kline doesn’t nail the South African accent – at times he sounds English, Australian, or American – but he handles it a heck of a lot better than I expected and is always any easy to take presence on screen. For me though, the acting standout here is surprisingly British TV veteran John Thaw as Kruger, the South African Minister for Justice who although initially seeming helpful towards Woods and Biko, turns out to be shady and duplicitous. Thaw so perfects the Afrikaans accent to my non-South African ears that you’d swear he was a native of the country. He’s a heck of a long way from “Inspector Morse” here. Timothy West and Ian Richardson do good small work as two of the more odious members of white South African society. I also liked the sad cameo by Attenborough’s brother-in-law, veteran character actor Gerald Sim as the frankly useless prison doctor. The look on his face says so much without words.

 

Scripted by John Briley (“Gandhi”, “The Medusa Touch”), this is no ‘white saviour’ film, at least not to anyone looking at the basic plot of the film (Who is really being saved here?). It’s simply a film about a white liberal South African who learns he’s a lot more white and not quite as liberal as he likes to imagine himself to be. Writing articles and saying you are liberal is pretty easy to do from such a comparatively comfortable position as Mr. Woods is/was in here. It’s a bit of a shame that Woods isn’t that compelling a character, but what would you do? Tell the story from the POV of Mr. Biko? That’d make for a worthy and interesting film, but it wouldn’t be “Cry Freedom”. So I’ve got no problems with the story being told by a white man about a white man, my issue is more that Donald Woods is far from the most compelling character in his own story. And there’s not much that can be done about that, so it’s a forgivable sin.

 

Flawed and dated, but for 1987 this solid Apartheid drama is more confrontational of white liberalism than you might expect. It’s a strong and important film about a truly disgusting time for humanity as a whole, but particularly in South Africa. It’s a shame the film is far too long, but for the most part this is pretty fascinating and effective stuff. You can tell David Lean was Mr. Attenborough’s cinematic idol, brevity was never either man’s strength.

 

Rating: B-