The Case for Walking

I have to admit, I went into Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom with a lot of trepidation.

Not because of the cast.  With the awesome Idris Elba in the lead role and the stunning Naomie Harris as his eventual wife Winnie, there was never any doubt that the acting would not be incredible.

And the film looked completely amazing: from the busy streets of South Africa's townships to the beautiful dry countryside and some of the tribal villages, from the cramped squalor of the black "suburbs" to the cramped spartan prison cell to which Mandela is sentenced.

But my reservations came from how they would treat the life of the man.  I had heard that the film makers tried to find a balance, showing some of his flaws (his unfaithfulness and involvement in terrorist bombings) as well as his eventual rise to become one of the most beloved world leaders.  So I was a little concerned about quite how they would manage to pull that off.

In the end, I was worried about the wrong things.  They do an amazing job of showing snippets of Mandela's life, showing how he got involved in the ANC, his imprisonment and eventual release and rise to the presidency.  But the thing I found most... disappointing was that I found it hard to comprehend the why of what was going on - the transition from non violent protest to armed struggle I got, but I never quite got when he converted back again, or quite how South Africa shifted to universal voting, and quite how Mandela's words brought about an end to fighting in the streets.

What I really got a sense of was how Winnie Mandela was forged and shaped by the incarceration of her husband, and how she became hard, bitter and more extreme than her husband.  While Mandela's imprisonment was cruel, Winnie's detentions and humiliations were public, made worse by the fact she had two young daughters at home, waiting and depending on her.

Overall though, the film is very good, well acted and informative.  Well, to people willing to watch - a young couple at the far end of the row from me talked about what was going on for the entire duration of the two hour long biopic.  I seethed inside but couldn't draw their attention without raising my voice, and so I consoled myself by thinking that the perennially weeping girlfriend might have been a bit slow and so her boyfriend was doing the kind thing by explaining the extremely obvious things that were going on in front of us.  Or perhaps I missed my own opportunity to have the transitions between the phases of Mandela's life explained to me.  I will have to seek them out next time.

Verdict: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom is a very worthy film with amazing actors and a story worth telling.  It didn't convince me in that I didn't quite understood why things happened, but it did a great job in showing the what.  7 loud shirts out of 10.