Cry, the Beloved Country is South Africa’s first major post-election film project. William Pretorius spent a day on set
THERE’S a lot riding on director Darrell Roodt’s film of Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country, produced by Anant Singh. It’s the first major post-election film production. A new beginning? Yes, thinks Roodt, when you can pin him down during reshoots in Kliptown, just outside Johannesburg.
“Things have changed. Some people argue not, but there’s a cultural shift. People want to examine their history, their roots, to look at where they are now. It’s very important to make films to do this.”
The set is near Freedom Square, where the Freedom Charter was signed. Two kids wrestle, oblivious of the equipment that signifies “movie being made”. It’s difficult to tell who lives there and who are extras. A woman with a bundle of sticks on her head sways past. “Perfect,” says production designer David Barkham. She was unplanned. A mangy dog sniffs at a pair of discarded shoes. No, they’re props.
Barkham tells, in a voice modulated to talking quietly after a bearded crew member calls “roll sound” and we all have to shut up, how they wanted to film in a nearby Zionist Christian Church. They were refused permission although the church was poor, and they offered a lot of money. “We would have cleaned and painted it as well,” says Barkham.
Now carpenters are building a facade of the church several blocks from the set, with interiors in a studio. Barkham wonders what the parishioners will think when they see their church on screen. They really wanted to film in that church — it used to be a movie theatre.
The Fifties props were easier: things like cars, an aeroplane — “we found one straight out of Casablanca” — and a train. In fact, they have two trains. One was to be filmed at Pietermaritzburg station, but wires got crossed. The station was being painted so they had to relocate to Pretoria, with a new train. This one will be painted in colours that wash off.
But it’s all in a day’s filming. James Earl Jones, who plays pastor Stephen Khumalo, searching for his son in crime-ridden Johannesburg, is between takes. How does he feel playing a South African? He is soft-spoken, in spite of the famous booming voice. The quality he looks for is “humility”. That’s not easy: “Even to wake up in the morning is an act of arrogance — you take on life! But Khumalo’s humbleness is more than social, he walks in the steps of Jesus, as best as he can.”
Jones had a “vision of Khumalo” before he started filming. “His journey is from a peaceful countryside blessed by nature, to Johannesburg, a journey to Purgatory and Hell.”
Jones hasn’t seen as much of South Africa. “It’s hotel, highway and set.” He’d like to return with his family, “not as tourists, but to meet others in the same industry”. The poverty in Kliptown, though, upsets him: “the quaintness wears off and rage sets in” at the way squalor wears the spirit down. He’s not a critical outsider — he feels the same about similar parts of America.
The international media have been watching filming. Newsweek, The New York Times, international television crews have all paid a visit. Locally, though, there are some rumblings about “colonialism” in the choice of novel.
“I kind of agree with that,” says Roodt, “but we’re now allowed to approach the book with a Nineties perspective. The original film was colonial; the characters one- dimensional, divided between good old British upper-class guys and noble peasants, a bit too rah-rah. I’m making it more human.”
Confrontational protest films are over, he says: “Friends was the last nail in the coffin of that kind of cinema. Finish! Finish! Enough now.”
The novel, says Roodt, “is the one definitive classic about contemporary South Africa, and still surprisingly relevant”. It is much more “philosophical about the dilemma of apartheid, although it was written before apartheid was legislated. It’s about forgiveness, looking forward, understanding.” In other words, it’s universal.
But does it matter if the novel is colonial? On set, one realises that Paton’s words are getting a new, different life in that mysterious process of becoming a living, visual thing — a film. This isn’t martial arts junk for video, a sure-fire money-maker. Instead, they’re thinking South Africa — and that takes enormous courage and faith in film.
We might have a movie industry after all.