Catch a Fire (2006)

| Drama,History,Thriller
France / English
"This Fall stand for something " A drama about terrorism in Apartheid-era South Africa, revolving around a policeman (Robbins) and a young man (Luke) who carries out solo attacks against the regime.
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Great film-making
With Rabbit Proof Fence, The Quiet American and now Catch A Fire to his
credit in succession, Phillip Noyce appears to be leaving the
blockbuster action movies behind and moving into the realm of serious
but still mainstream cinema. These are all very proficient films with
interesting stories that contain relevant social and political
messages. It is noteworthy that the three are all based on historical
facts.
This style of film-making is much more interesting than films like
Syriana or (especially) The Constant Gardener. In those, the director
appears to make a show of promoting a worthy world view, but doesn't
really seem committed to the political cause. It felt gratuitous, the
director simply exploiting our interest in political conspiracies
without necessarily sharing that interest. Whatever it takes to get
bums on seats.
It is a difficult balance for a director. You want to do a story that
you know is going to be hard to sell. So you need a big name or two to
get the studio on board. But then you're stuck with a highly
recognisable face that everyone knows is American but has to use an
Afrikaaner accent.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that Tim Robbins was completely
believable as the South African police interrogator. His accent seemed
flawless, and with his excellent acting I was able to buy-in to his
character immediately. And I assumed that Derek Luke, who played the
protagonist Patrick Chamusso, was African. In fact, he's from LA and
has appeared in Spartan and Antwone Fisher (in the title role).
Apartheid, like say Nazism or so-called terrorism, is an easy target.
It doesn't take much effort to totally demonise even minor
participants, even though they may be ordinary people. Noyce skilfully
avoided such caricatures. Using effective cinematic devices, he was
able to portray that both the protagonist and the antagonist had much
in common. They both had two daughters, and both loved their families
and their country. But one became a torturer and one became the
tortured.
Noyce's portrayal of Apartheid was very balanced. Robbin's character
Vos was a family man with a job. His family loved him, but at work he
was a man to be feared. Torture is a method that has been shown to not
work. Both Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo and Noyce's
Catch A Fire illustrate this by depicting false confessions that were
actually made by innocents. According to Noyce at the Q&A session that
proceeded the film, the confessions made by Chamusso after he joined
the ANC were deliberately sparse on detail and designed to appease but
ultimately frustrate his interrogators.
I asked Noyce if the film was making a statement about current world
events, and he acknowledged that it was. It is very relevant to the war
on terror and the West's turning to inhumane methods. "One man's
terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", he quoted. Patrick
Chamusso was a hero, he said, not because he took up arms, but because
he renounced them. The ANC had a policy of not harming innocents, but
this wasn't always the case. Chamusso was unsuccessful (and was
jailed), because he was careful to follow this policy.
Phillip Noyce is showing himself to be a deft master of quietly
subversive films with commercial appeal, but ultimately they are
socio-political commentaries with a strong humanitarian element. This
film should have wide appeal among both casual movie-goers and the more
serious cinephiles.
PersonalSeen it: | Nej |
Nr of disks/tapes: | 1 |
Storage device: | DVD |
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