Henry Miller once said it’s not important what one paints, it’s that one paints. So when it comes to local film one should always stress that it’s good that something independent happens at all. Equally important, though, is what is being made and why.
This is partially because some local film-makers seem to think they are beyond criticism, or that they should be judged by criteria different to work done internationally. This is dangerous thinking. After all, there are plenty of overseas low-budget films that we never see because they are, simply, bad.
The long and the short of it is that if we’re not prepared to make independent films that can compete internationally, which doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice our own reality, then we’re still safely snuggled beneath the protective blanket of apartheid where we implicitly beg special privileges, whether it’s as aggrieved oppressors or expedient victims or, lately, both.
Criticising a local film is often a painful exercise, partially because one has usually worked with or knows some of the people involved. But here’s a thought: if we were so serious about film we’d put aside our precious egos and we’d be working on the basis that every word in a script and every frame in a film should be meticulously analysed, not because of any personal agendas but in order to raise the standard of local production in general and independent production in particular, both of which can certainly do with improvement.
And so we get Francois Coertze’s latest low-budget film Lyk Lollery, which could translate roughly as “Corpse Trouble” or, more creatively, “Corpsing It”.
But then there was an unpleasantness even before the film started showing. The director told us that if we were to leave the theatre we would not be allowed to return, since it would interfere with others’ viewing pleasure, and he meant it.
Then, once the film started, the video quality was lousy and when an actor arrived late the film was stopped and another announcement was made. A smoother version would show and continue where the previous one left off. Fine. And then the movie continued. And continued.
Written by actress Dorette Nel, the idea has plenty of possibilities. She plays the wife of a typical white, middle-class Afrikaner, played by David Dukas, and he and his grease-monkey pal, played by Jonathan (credited as Jonny) Pienaar, are going to watch some Springbok rugby one fine Saturday afternoon.
But then an SABC official, played by Elize Cawood, arrives and wants to see the man’s TV licence. Rattled, he gives her some popcorn and, since he doesn’t have a licence, asks God for a miracle. God duly obliges and Cawood chokes on some popcorn and presently expires.
Thus we have a perfectly legitimate situation for a farce. But what does director Coertze do with such fine actors and such a good idea? He goes the old Afrikaans farce route. That is, he goes silly. Simpel.
People talk to themselves, repeat each other’s sentences for some sort of failed comical effect, use ridiculous expressions instead of commonly used expletives and – a sure sign of comic insecurity – lots of irritating music and sound effects to cue our laughs and give the thing pace. Also, the film is set in the Karoo, which we never see, but the cars have Gauteng registration plates.
On a sexual level the ridiculous expression – “O gatrat”, meaning, literally, “Oh hole-gear” or more precisely “Oh arse-gear” – ties up with the way the two men relate to each other. These are not two deeply closeted rugger buggers. These are two shallowly closeted rugger buggers. Someone here is just begging to get sodomised. You should see how flappy these two butch men get about a little fire on the back of a bakkie.
But it’s on the socio-economic level that this film is particularly interesting. The main character constantly complains about how the present system stinks. Is there perhaps a longing (heimwee) for a time when a privileged white minority had farms and complete political and economic control in those wide-open spaces of the mythically white Karoo?
Or is this “just” a story? If so, it wouldn’t be up for sale. And that is where it gets really cynical. It is aimed exclusively at white Afrikaners, a small but historically loyal niche. But it doesn’t try to humour them so much about a present in which we are all equally free to be unequally miserable; instead it exploits their collective past prejudices to the hilt for a kind of moan-session-for-profit: as if all white Afrikaners are as stupid and parochial as this lot.
So, for being made independently Lyk Lollery scores 10, for energy it scores one but for what it says (and how) it scores exactly zero.
Lyk Lollery premiers in Johannesburg this week. For more information contact Abyss Production on Tel: (012) 347 8408 or 083 305 5631.