Red Dust is based on a novel by Gillian Slovo, who is very good at plotting and not so good at prose. Luckily, in this case, when books get translated into movies, it’s the prose that gets removed.
What remains is a watchable, often gripping, sometimes moving story based on some of what happened at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Red Dust is at least infinitely better than the portentously hollow Forgiveness, which distinctly lacked plot.
Here, the commission’s travelling roadshow is heading for a small country town. Heading there, too, is Sarah Bercant, a lawyer representing a man once tortured by the security police; his case is to be heard at the commission. Sarah is a South African returning to her home town. She has an American accent, not just because she’s played by Hilary Swank, but because she has been living in New York for a long time.
She is representing Alex Mpondo, former freedom fighter and now a member of Parliament. He has a rather odd accent, a bit West Indian at times, a bit Afrikaans at others, partly perhaps because he is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor (who was so good in Dirty Pretty Things, in case you’ve forgotten who he is). This is Alex’s home town too, and at one point a relative points out that he can no longer speak his mother tongue properly. Otherwise, no explanation is given for his odd accent.
Red Dust is credible and creditable in many respects, but those accents do rather get in the way. South Africans, particularly filmmakers, are keen on telling everyone about our wonderful plethora of national stories that are begging to be told.
Unfortunately, for financial reasons, we usually have to employ Americans and Brits to help us tell them — to stand in for us, as it were. God forbid we should play ourselves. I suppose that’s simply one symptom of globalisation. It means, though, that a cultural product selling itself on the basis of its “authenticity” is compromised before it gets off the ground.
Apart from the accents, though, Swank and Ejiofor are good in Red Dust. The latter does a fearful amount of brow-furrowing, but his character is under a lot of strain, and not just from trying to talk like a South African.
At least the South Africans in the cast don’t have the same problem, and they do a sterling job. Jamie Bart-lett is both frightening and pathetic as the policeman who’s confessing and seeking amnesty; Greg Latter is perfect as a slimy lawyer. Mawongo Dominic Tyawa and Nomhle Nkonyeni are effective as the parents of Alex’s late comrade, Steve Sizela; Nkonyeni is very moving in one scene. Marius Weyers isn’t given much to do, expect be an under-motivated and under-explained voice of conscience.
Red Dust doesn’t go deeply into the issues raised by the truth commission, using them chiefly as the motor of a thriller-type plot. Naturally, guilt and responsibility are important, and initially the movie seems prepared to entertain the notion that things are not always very clear-cut, but mostly it displaces the matter of guilt on to the simpler question of what really happened in Alex’s case. When the truth emerges, the guilt issue is solved. In that respect, Red Dust is all so much simpler than the real truth commission was.