At the heart of Justin Chadwick's film lies a wondrous central performance by Idris Elba. Although facially unlike Nelson Mandela, he captures the great man's mannerisms and speech-patterns with uncanny accuracy. Throughout his long life, depicted in MANDELA from his humble beginnings as a lawyer to his final accession to the Presidency of the Republic of South Africa in the mid-1990s, he comes across as a devoted family man, who is nonetheless devoted to the nationalist cause. When faced with a choice between domesticity and politics, he inevitably chooses the latter option. This might not necessarily be the best for him, but it is something that he believes he must do for the cause of the African National Congress. Although not by nature a violent man, Elba's Mandela is nonetheless pragmatic; as the Sixties wear on, he understands that violence is necessary in order to advance the cause of African equality in the apartheid regime. While this performance stands out in the film, the handling of post-1945 South African history is superficially handled. We are not told why the apartheid regime came into being in the late Forties; nor does the film explain how and why it fundamentally differed from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. For the first half-hour, the film adopts a comic-strip approach to history; a series of apparently disparate sequences follow one another with little concern for historical coherence. It is only when Mandela is sent to Robben Island for life imprisonment that the structure becomes more comprehensible. When Mandela is released from prison, the film once again fails to provide explanations for the sudden outbreak of violence in the townships following his release, when it seemed that African was fighting African as well as the white minority. Nor does the film acknowledge the contribution made by other members of the ANC (African National Congress) - for example, Oliver Tambo. Viewers expecting to learn something about South African history since 1945 will be sadly disappointed.
Review of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom
