A Dry White Season
Rotten Tomatoes scores 1989’s “A Dry White Season” with a whopping 91% approval rating. But this Donald Sutherland Apartheid tale, based on a true story, is so held back by its hokey feel that it fails to deliver on the promise of its premise. Film reviewers tend to be liberal. No problem with that here. I’m pretty much left of left, but a good message, a good story and a just premise do not a good movie make. What were these reviewers smoking? Or am I the one over indulging in the wacky tobacky? Was 1989 so long ago that it can’t stand up to today’s rigorous standards of realism? “Rain Man” came out around that time and that holds up today.
Sutherland is an Afrikanner schoolteacher- a good man by all accounts (though how good is any man complicit as a part of the ruling minority in Apartheid South Africa?) who doesn’t have so much as a question for Apartheid. But he is slowly awakened by events involving his Black gardener, who comes to him for help when his son is unjustly rounded up and caned. Let it go, Sutherland advises. A few days later the boy is dead. Now, a little concerned, he questions the matter, and naively believes that will help things. The gardener, who probes only to SEE the body of his dead son, is rounded up, tortured and killed next. Now Sutherland goes to a lawyer, played by Marlon Brando in what is, if nothing else, a fun performance about a man not at all resigned to injustice but rather one who continues to fight it in the face of such resignation. What next? Well, the ills of Apartheid are embodied by one incredibly evil Police Captain.
The more Sutherland questions his surroundings, the more his wife and daughter disapprove and the more his son stands by his side. Not to mention the country club, his boss, etc. etc. etc. This is rather touching, but the production value is a touch below a modern day MOW. Also, why must a film about Apartheid be thru the eyes of a white man? Is it because westernized whites are its audience? I guess so, but it gets tired. I mean, come on, how could “The Last Samurai” turn out to be Tom Cruise? This film is noble in its message (though it gives very little overview of the situation, if well done, that could actually be dramatically pleasing) but less than flimsy in its execution.
Story: C Sutherland discovers – gasp – APARTHEID!
Acting: C Not so good, I just can’t actually say anything bad about Brando-ever.
Visuals: C Blah.
Originality/Innovation: C- So cheesy.
Enjoyability Grade: C- Now, I must say the injustice drove me crazy, but the cheesy filmmaking is just as bad, at least after the fact (of course Apartheid was much much worse).
Overall Grade: C- O poor Sutherland and Brando. At least Brando railed against the film when it came out.
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