Saturday, January 4, 2014

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Justin Chadwick offers a selective charismatic altruistic account of Nelson Mandela's (Idris Elba) life in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

Significant events from Mandela's heroic trials are qualitatively condensed then narratively harvested.

It unreels at a fast pace but Elba's calm committed confrontational resolve surreally subdues the passage of time, tantalizingly transforming 30 seconds into two-minutes-forty, proactively producing captivating capsules.

A good companion piece for 12 Years a Slave in terms of the differing approaches adopted to biographically elucidate, McQueen cultivating a shifting pyrodactic panorama, Chadwick proceeding more traditionally.

Chadwick doesn't shy away from presenting the difficulties associated with actively pursuing disenfranchised political agendas, and the toll Mandela's sublime idealism takes on his wives and children are dis/comfortingly displayed.

His first wife leaves him but his second never yields in her championing of his cause while he's imprisoned, suffering jail-time and countless indignities consequently.

Their breakup after he's released is perhaps the most unfortunate disengaging of amorous affections I've ever come across.

Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (Naomie Harris) kept the fire burning brightly throughout his 27 years in prison and seeing them part is tragic if not earth shattering.

But Mandela believed in a non-violent working solution and when provided with the opportunity to politically enact one, engaged.

Taking the resultant monumental fallout in stride.

Not a saint, perhaps, but definitely, a person of steel.

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