Butler's Cinema Scene

Idris Elba as the imprisoned Nelson Mandela

“MANDELLA: LONG WALK TO FREEDOM”  My rating: B- (Opens wide Dec. 25)

139 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” is an honorable stab at a screen biography of a much-revered individual. On one level it’s inspiring, sure…how could a movie about the late Nelson Mandela not be inspiring?

But it’s also pedestrian…not in terms of production value but in its low-keyed sensibilities. Director Justin Chadwick, a veteran of British television with only two other features to his credit (“The Other Boleyn Girl,” “The First Grader”), is aiming for an intimate epic but comes up short. As a huge admirer of Mandela, I wanted to be deeply moved by this film. I wasn’t.

For starters, there’s the casting of Idris Elba in the title role. I know, I know…Elba is a terrific actor and extraordinarily studly, which is part of the problem. Look at the brooding look he gives in the poster for the movie…it’s more “The Wire” than peace, love and brotherhood.

And the one physical characteristic of Nelson Mandela that we all immediately recognize — his absolutely joyous, infectious  smile — is totally absent from Elba’s depiction.  Curiously, he’s at his best when playing the older, grayer Mandela — Elba has nailed the man’s trademark walk.

(When it comes to depictions of Mandela on screen, I’ve got to go with Morgan Freeman’s in Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus.”)

Naomie Harris as Winnie Mandela

Granted, if you want a relatively quick (2 hours 20 minutes) immersion in Mandela’s story, this movie delivers.

William Nicholson’s screenplay follows the man from the late 1940s, when he was a lawyer representing poor clients in South Africa’s courts, through his gradual radicalization, his training in terrorist/liberation tactics with the African National Congress, to his arrest, conviction and life prison sentence.

One problematical issue from a dramatist’s point of view is that the forces that led to Mandela’s release after 27 years — the world’s growing disgust with Apartheid, increasingly violent confrontations between black South Africans and the authorities — all came to a head while Mandela was in a jail cell. Unable to communicate with the greater world, he was more pawn than player.

The other is that while it’s easy to depict the radicalization of an individual (just show him/her enduring outrages), limning the slow development from revolutionary to advocate of nonviolence is difficult to capture in a satisfyingly dramatic fashion.

On the positive side, the film does a pretty good job of depicting the injustices to which black South Africans were subjected on a daily basis.

And “Mandela” sidesteps the temptation to make its subject too saint-like. We see the younger Mandela full of arrogance and cheating on his (first) wife.

And Naomie Harris’ depiction of his second bride, Winnie Mandela, almost steals the show. This versatile actress (“28 Days Later,” the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series, the Bond flick “Skyfall”) depicts Winnie as a persecuted woman driven to radical action while her imprisoned husband was becoming mellower . Even after a freed Mandela had endorsed a revenge-free black takeover of the country, a militant Winnie is seen urging residents of the townships to seek out and kill police informants in their midst.

As an educational tool (today’s young people know next to nothing about the bad old days of Apartheid) “Mandela” undoubtedly serves a purpose. But it’s more history lesson than searing human drama.

| Robert W. Butler