Simply A Masterpiece

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good movie but grossly overrated

As Good As It Gets

John Malkovich portrays an esteemed Capetown professor who lives somewhat in his own ivory tower, has an affair with a young student and finds his idyllic life in academia and ego-gratification shattered.He decides somewhat on a whim to visit his daughter Lucy, who runs a farm on the South African coast. She cares for several dogs and has a native worker who helps her on the farm. It is a small cohesive village and she is on the outside looking in, a veritable intruder, in more ways than one.The story develops and foreshadows the violence which is beset upon Lucy and her father by a local disturbed boy who rapes her, along with a gang of two other young men. Her father sustains burns, but does not see what actually happens to Lucy in the other room, although the audience can infer she is being raped repeatedly. Malkovich at first approaches her gingerly, thinking she is damaged and distraught needing to move away from the farm and her assailants. However, the opposite proves to be true. In a rather dismal scene, Lucy tells her father she must remain, that rapes like this have occurred before, and she is owing this to the people of the land, that she must remain to take on a sort of punishment.There are psychological nuances here. People inducing sadomasochism, or enduring it for their real or presumed character flaws. It makes for a compelling story, and I'd imagine the novel by J.M. Coetzee is a great read. The film at times does not translate this subtlety, and we are left feeling annoyed with Lucy and her victimized state.Malkovich is good here, as usual, with an affected but acceptable accent, a restrained but marked need for sexuality in his later years. He has an affair with a local veterinarian where he brings some of Lucy's unfortunate dogs to be etherized. The scene where Malkovich plays music for a dog, the dog responds to him, wanting his love, and he brings it to the vet to be destroyed is sad and stark. "Put it out of its misery", he tells her...and we almost imagine he is speaking of his own life instead of the dogs.Overall a worthy film, although the book is probably much clearer in intent and I am now intrigued to read the authors works regarding animals and the fragility of life. Recommended. 8/10. **Addendum: Have finished the novel and it is a must read

I'm not surprised this film didn't do well at the box office, it's a tough film and a tough book and in no way "uplifting".Coetzee's story is very complex and disturbing, balancing disparate value judgements and conceits; it's astounding really that it doesn't collapse under it's own weight. The transition to film is very precise, and as some other reviewers have said, perhaps too precise. But I think it's remarkable, it's just not going to make anyone very happy.Malkovich is at his best in this film. Maybe he's not very good at accents, but he has perfect control over his dissolute manner, essential for this character. No, you won't like him, there are no heroes.But if you're looking for a thread to follow without consulting Byron and company, just think about the mess that apartheid left behind.

This austere movie based on a Booker prize winning novel be J.M.Coertzee will leave you breathless as the performances by Malkovich and his co star Jessica Haines are both very compelling.A story perhaps without a beginning or an ending and not a movie for the brainless, may suit more than one viewing to figure out all the symbolism here of post apartheid South Africa. Here we are asked how do you handle the injustices of life? aloof like Melanie, timid like Rosalind, with desperate acceptance like Lucy or with audacious dignity like David? There is a lot more to discover in this movie.The title is an enigma, where is the Disgrace? In life itself or In our inability to shape our futures with much effect? Well worth a watch but be prepared to be frustrated, angry and outraged by the displays of injustice paraded before you.

JM Coetzee's writing isn't to everyone's taste. Some of it might seem pointlessly dense and self-indulgent. But Disgrace is a widely-hailed masterpiece, and in this reviewer's opinion rightly so. The problem in adapting it for the screen is that it's largely an allegory of post-apartheid South Africa and of white responses to it. It presents two very different such responses represented by the two main characters. On the one hand there's David, a professor who is caught having an affair with a mixed-race student, confesses everything without even being asked and willingly accepts his punishment and the end of his career. On the other, there's his daughter Lucy, who is gang-raped by a group of black men but who refuses to do anything about it other than bear the child which she conceives and indeed marry a relative of the rapist. Of course, this is not how we'd expect real people or indeed convincing film characters to behave. But in the novel at least, that isn't the point. David represents a point of view which sees formal justice as everything. Guilty people (himself included) should accept their punishment and move on. By extension, the abolition of formal apartheid is all that is needed to remove any sense of race-based disadvantage or special pleading. Whites have given up power and non-whites (on this view) need to accept that and expect no more than formal equal treatment. Lucy, on the other hand, represents the exact opposite position. Formal justice has no meaning - there is no such thing as crime and victims (herself included) take no comfort from the punishment of criminals. Again, the analogy is that abolishing the formal features of apartheid solves nothing - racial injustice and its consequences will always remain. Accordingly, whites need to accept that and the desire for revenge that comes with.Neither character is attractive in the novel, and neither point of view is optimistic. I suspect that's exactly what Coetzee intended, challenging the reader to come up with some alternative between two bleak and diametrically-opposed alternatives. The trouble is that allegory doesn't work well on screen. In the film - indeed in any film - there's less left to your imagination than in a novel. Many who've seen the film but not read the book are seemingly left bemused about why a rape victim passively accepts her situation, or why a tenured professor doesn't try to save his career. The symbolism and allegory of a novel, particularly a complex and challenging novel like Disgrace, just doesn't register. The film's strict adherence to the book, including much dialogue which is used verbatim, doesn't help this. In other words, both the main characters are caricatures, intended to represent opposing wider beliefs or viewpoints. That's fine in a novel, but when a film-maker gives them an immediacy - faces, voices and surroundings - it becomes harder to see them as anything other than 'real'. What was meant to be absurd but illuminating risks becoming simply unbelievable. Nonetheless, it has its moments. Both leads do well to give their characters at least some credibility, especially Jessica Haines as the self-willed but ultimately passive Lucy. The affair between John Malkovich and his student is given a strongly and appropriately sordid flavour. Eriq Ebouaney brings just the right balance of awkward bonhomie and hidden menace to Petrus. And the attack on the farm has a power which no novel can capture. Overall, a decent effort at filming what is probably and ultimately unfilmable. Read the book first and you might like it more.