One of the worst movies I've ever seen

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Like "Cry Freedom" and "A World Apart", "A Dry White Season" looks at someone who begins to see the truth of life for black South Africans under apartheid. In this case, it's a teacher (Donald Sutherland) in a whites-only school in 1976. When the son of his gardener gets attacked by the police at a protest, the teacher investigates, drawing the ire of the authorities. There are some pretty gruesome scenes of massacres and torture (and remember, this was in a country that the west claimed was a democracy).One line caught my attention. The teacher's wife (Janet Suzman, niece of anti-apartheid activist Helen Suzman) says of South Africa's black population "Don't you think they'd do the same to us if given the chance?" Crime has persisted since the end of apartheid, and most of the black population is no better off than it was under apartheid. In fact, due to massive privatization as apartheid was ending, much of the country's infrastructure is in a state of disarray. The question is whether one prefers a totalitarian government that provides services or a democratic one that doesn't.Anyway, a good movie. Despite the emphasis on Susan Sarandon and Marlon Brando, they have smaller roles than I expected. Whatever the case, I recommend it.

Released in the year before the process of ending apartheid began, A DRY WHITE SEASON offers a straightforward portrayal of life, with the Afrikaaners depicted as almost uniformly racist and the black Africans as their largely innocent victims. The only people straddling this racial and ideological divide are history teacher Ben du Toit (Donald Sutherland) and his young son Johan (Rowen Elmes). At the beginning of the film we see du Toit, a former Springbok rugby union player, happily presiding over his learners at his all-white private school. It is only when he learns of the brutal way in which his African gardener Gordon Ngubene (Winston Ntshona) has been murdered by the authorities that his hitherto fixed beliefs in Afrikaaner supremacy are challenged. After an abortive court case charging the police with brutality, du Toit determines to pursue justice at any cost, even at the cost of his family life.The plot is a familiar one with resonances far beyond the immediate South African context. It could prove equally plausible in an historical drama about the anticommunist era in the United States. We roughly know what will happen in the end, but there are some noteworthy moments along the way, especially Marlon Brando's star turn as a campaigning lawyer where he rehearses his British English accent (previously shown off in the remake of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962).Most of the supporting roles are played by British actors speaking a peculiarly nasal form of Afrikaaner English, including Richard Wilson, Ronald Pickup, Paul Brooke and a youthful Susannah Harker (in a pre- HOUSE OF CARDS role). Perhaps the ruling Afrikaaner oligarchy intervened, but the film would have appeared more historically authentic if more locally employed actors had been cast. Nonetheless the black Africans are all played by locals, who are given the chance to speak Bantu as well as English in the film. Susan Sarandon appears briefly as a British journalist, but she doesn't have to do much.A DRY WHITE SEASON looks a bit anachronistic now, but its sincerity of purpose cannot be doubted.

This 1989 anti-Apartheid drama makes a half-hearted attempt to include some perspective from the black minority in South Africa, but once again the story is slanted entirely toward its white protagonist (upper class, liberal schoolteacher Donald Sutherland) and equally white villain (sadistic secret police chief Jurgen Prochnow). The whole thrust of the plot is in fact set up so that the greatest outrage is reserved for Sutherland's all too predictable death at the end of the film, and not for all the incidental violence in Soweto. If the scenario showed any brains or integrity the limited point of view might have easily been excused (cf 'A World Apart'), but the urgent moral issues are instead reduced to hack melodrama, wasting the talent of several respected actors (who should have known better) in flimsy two-dimensional roles. Sutherland fakes a Boer accent, Susan Sarandon (on screen for all of five minutes) fakes a British accent, and in the end only Marlon Brando manages to transcend the banality of the script, in a small and otherwise unnecessary role as Sutherland's lawyer.

Euzhan Palcy is a great director. She has broken many barriers for Black Female Filmmakers. Most of her work has been political with strong impact, as this film is. Never before have we seen such a story told through the eyes of a black woman and done so well that she received critical acclaim.I have to disagree with Mr. Trevor Moses that this was an awful film. Also, Mr. Moses get your facts straight. The director of this film Ms. Palcy was not a racist hence the amazing cast. And one last thing these actors did this movie for almost nothing, including Robert Redford who did it for FREE, all because they saw her vision. FYI check out www.euzhanpalcy.com