Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

An action-packed slog

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Originally I saw this film and thought "wow, Madiba! What a great fella he was in the face of that awful apartheid system and the unjust imprisonment he received just for being black....in Africa!" Since I was born in 1984 I had no memory of Mandela or SA so I just accepted the default narrative like everyone else. Then I started researching the people and events. That's when my perceptions truly changed and a broader picture formed. Boers were the first to settle the land they are now being forced to forfeit sans compensation. Land deals, alliances, etc allowed them the real estate to transform empty, valueless land into an economic powerhouse, the only of its kind on the continent. Apartheid was a system established for the problem of illegal immigration that morphed into something else and flamed by the media and liberals to become something of worldwide significance.As for Mandela, TERRORIST! Cut and dry. He signed off on over 50 bombings that killed thousands. He should have been put to death when he was convicted. His great honor and all that bluster is so irrelevant when you are fomenting, complicicit in, and responsible for the murder of thousands. His fat ass wife was even worse. Then the genius took power and further wrecked the country in a reign of Obama like ineptitude and incompetence masked in oratory skills. This is pure propaganda and kinda leaves out the most important details because this is pure fiction. Alfa guy Pedro or Pepe or whatever his name is does a decent job of playing this fictional noble, compassionate, thoughtful, peaceful mass murdering radical terrorist.

In the Color of Freedom we have Dennis Haysbert and Nelson Mandela in just the way I think of him, and Joseph Fiennes who was his guard for many years. Along the way we see what man is capable of at his best and that is the ability to see the truth when it is before him every day of his life, day after day, year after year. In the case of Color of Freedom we are expose to why Nelson Mandela was, and is, who he is. I suggest watching this movie first and the watching Invictus as a follow up as they tie together using the lines of the poem Invictus which, if only possible, should be the motto for everyone. As the movie slowly evolves you'll be exposed to much about the thinking of South Africa of the past, where as in Invictus you be expose to it in the future. I don't know if there is a movie which tells the story of Nelson Mandela's like before he was imprisoned, but there needs to be.

Seems quite sad that the true-to-life character of Nelson Mandela would be reduced to a supporting character in a film about him; his stay on the Robben Island prison and his consequent release in the 1990s. Truth is, Bille August's 2007 film has a head and a heart in two different places; his film more closely resembling the sort of thing your bog-standard GCSE teacher might slap on for the students in class, before nipping out for a quick cigarette, during the week that sees the school syllabus demand South African Apartheid era be studied. But despite all this, it didn't bother me as much; the film observing the changing attitudes of a prison guard on the aforementioned island jail and using him as an example of which the greater changing attitudes of a nation at that time are templated. Yes, it resembles a TV movie of the week and yes, at about the half way mark you can envisage the film's final few moments consisting of a little white text caption coming into focus on the black background detailing what the lead character's current state is; but above all this is a film wanting to tackle a white individual's guilt rather than a black individual's plight and with this established pretty early on in the film, I did not have a problem with the direction the film took.Goodbye Bafana revolves around a pro-white; pro-Apartheid guard with the South African prison service named James Gregory, played by Joseph Fiennes, who moves to Robben island with his family of wife Gloria (Kruger); young son Brent and daughter Natasha in the 1960s. James is a censor officer, cutting out words and sentences from inmates' letters and having the authority to listen in on conversations inmates have with their visitors; cruelly cutting them off if he deems it fit to do so in that they break the house rules. The very first scene is the family shipping themselves off to the island, a sense of life beginning at this point. James is the focus here, his family relegated to mere items of viewership with the children playing roles that see them ask the questions that ill-informed on Apartheid audience members will be asking; Diane Kruger, the relatively talented actress, not given anything to do bar be relegated into playing the role of the token fascist whose racial tidbits sum up an entire mindset of an era. "Why are the blacks prisoners on the island?" asks Brent; "Because they're terrorists who want our land." replies Gloria, in a fabricated and false manner. Then we remember this is playing to GCSE students whom are unfamiliar with the subject and it is they who are asking with the programmed response kicking in.James is the bridge between a shallow, vacuous existence in his wife's-plus-her friends' empty existence on the island and the gruelling, grotty prison set life of a number of imprisoned blacks whom it is deemed are enemies of the state. One of these is the aforementioned Nelson Mandela, played here by Dennis Haysbert, who does a reasonable job shuffling from scene to scene and keeping a stern and expressionless face in playing the man; although the level of the performance cannot be understated when we recall what it is Haysbert is exactly required to do: essentially playing a dispirited prisoner throughout and given little room to play the equality driven saviour of a nation and its beliefs.Interestingly, the moment that encapsulates the very sentiment that the film is more interested in Gregory's tale than Mandela and his struggle and the manner in which he went about doing what he did actually occurs very late on, but it's telling all the same; in a sequence that sees Mandela and his assistants sit around a large table about to indulge in the sorts of discussions that saw them do what they did but sees James leave the room with the film following him, just as those at the table appear to get started, so as to cover his moving house and his family problems. Akin to this is James' gradual arc of realisation, something that's satisfying in its very basic observation; the man's past life experience in knowing a young black boy in his youth proof he was once able to connect with blacks in a friendly manner with moments such as the reading of some kind of Mandela written equality charter just foreshadowing the obvious. As the years roll on and everyone grows older, the Gregory's shift around and Mandela himself is kept on the sidelines as he changes prisons looking at the main strand of the film from a distanced perspective. It's a situation akin to John Boorman's 2005 film Country of My Skull (In My Country, to Americans), when the plight and strife of oppressed South Africans and their justice is given the odd glance in tangent to a Caucasian individual or individuals and their relationships with other Caucasians around them plus whatever hardships they suffer with their employers. It isn't reason enough to hate the film, but it's reason enough to get a little flustered provided you can identify the niggling frustrations and work around them so as to enjoy the film as it stands. The film tries to provide some dramatic tension to proceedings, the arrival of a new and more brutal Robben Island chief of staff later on in life supposed to instill a sense of what might happen if Gregory were to be caught by this new chief as his attitudes begin to change. Goodbye Bafana was made with the best of intentions, achieving what it sets out to do with relative dramatic and respectful aplomb, but one cannot argue that it all too often feels like a low-key retelling of events for those naive to the subject matter.

While many books and films about South Africa's Apartheid have attempted to convey the tension and the eventual dissolution of that sociopolitical scheme, few histories bring us as close to the core of the schism as does Bille August's excellent film THE COLOR OF FREEDOM. Based on the book GOODBYE BAFANA by James Gregory (with Bob Graham) the story details the relationship between Nelson Mandela and prison warden James Gregory during Mandela's long imprisonment on Robben Island off the coast of South Africa, and the gradual friendship that occurred between these disparate men. Studying this development of a friendship provides an opportunity to better understand the concept of Apartheid and of the evils of racism in general. Nelson Mandela (Dennis Haysbert) was convicted of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment on the desolate Robben Island for his non-violent attempts to end racism in South Africa, attempts that eventually resulted in work stoppages and resistance movements that moved the articulate, well-educated lawyer Mandela into the realm of activism. While on Robben Island he was guarded by one James Gregory (Joseph Fiennes), a pro-apartheid, cruel prison employee who was assigned to Mandela as a spy and censor because of Gregory's knowledge of the local language Xhosa (learned from his childhood when his best friend was a black boy named Bafana). Gregory lives on the island with this wife (Diane Kruger) and children and his commitment to his family provides a stark contrast to his hatred of his black 'Kaffir' prisoners: his involvement with the pro-apartheid status is strengthened by his direct communication with Intelligence in the cities of South Africa where his censored information from the prisoners leads to definitive capture and 'disposal' of the blacks. On a trip ashore Gregory and his wife and children witness first hand the beatings and cruelties of the whites against the blacks and Gregory returns to his duties on Robben Island with a gradually changing point of view for the model prisoner Mandela. They begin communicating in Xhosa and Gregory allows Mandela's wife Winnie (Faith Ndukwana) to spend more committed time with her husband on her restricted visits to Robben island. One particular misstep - Gregory passes Mandela's Christmas gift of a piece of chocolate to Winnie - threatens Gregory's status on the island, while at the same time bonding Mandela and Gregory like brothers. Gregory's life and philosophy have been changed by Mandela's powerful personality and spirit and his eventual release from prison into the new, freed South Africa has been aided in a small but meaningful way by Gregory - a reflection of Gregory's childhood bond with his friend Bafana. August captures the tension and the atmosphere of South Africa in this visually stunning film. Fiennes is superb as James Gregory as is Diane Kruger as his wife. Dennis Haysbert conveys the spiritual essence of Mandela despite the fact that his physical appearance is not at all like the Mandela known so well from the still constant photographs of the diminutive freedom fighter we see frequently. But the film does convey the tenor of the changing times during the 27-year confinement of Nelson Mandela. The featurettes on the DVD offer lengthy history lessons about the real events referenced in the film and add immeasurably to the film's overall success. There is much to learn from this film in addition to the fact that it is a solid work of cinematic artistry. Grady Harp