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Berlinale screens story of how Mandela freed his jailer's mind
2007-02-11
The true and moving story of how Nelson Mandela changed the life and political views of a white warden in an apartheid jail had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. "Goodbye Bafana" was shot in the South African prisons where Mandela spent 27 years of his life and stars US actor Dennis Haysbert as the liberation hero and Joseph Fiennes as the guard. When they first meet at the infamous Robben Island jail in 1968 the guard, James Gregory, believes Mandela should have been hanged as a terrorist but his racist views soon make way for respect for the dignified prisoner. Gregory is given the job of censoring the letters of Mandela and his fellow African National Congress inmates because as a child he had learnt to speak their native Xhosa from a black friend on a farm. "When you have no brothers you end up playing with the kaffers (blacks)," he explains to his bosses. He passes on information from the letters to the security police which he realises is used to kill members of the struggle against white rule and perhaps also Mandela's son. Years later when his own son dies in a car accident, his guilt overwhelms him and he tells his ideologically brainwashed wife, played by Diane Kruger, and later Mandela that he thinks this was divine punishment. Gregory was assigned by the apartheid authorities to guard Mandela until he was released in 1990 as the white regime began to crumble. It put him in the extraordinary position of having contact with a man who was a myth to most white South Africans. It was forbidden to publish Mandela's photograph or speeches. The film is based on a contested account of their relationship which the retired warden published after Mandela become South Africa's first democratically elected president. Mandela never confirmed Gregory's claim that they had become friends and considered suing the jail warden for publishing his prison letters. Anthony Sampson, Mandela's official biographer, flatly rejected facts stated in the book. Danish director Bille August said he chose to ignore the controversy because the story makes such a strong point on how Mandela reconciled black and white South Africans. "What I think is that simply the fact that this was made from the opponent's view shows how Mandela changed his oppressors," he said. If the film's credibility suffers because the script closely follows Gregory's book, August manages a fine portrait of Mandela and captures not only the vernacular and lifestyle but the mindset of white South Africans. Haysbert said he simply hoped that Mandela, who has been sent a copy of the film, would like it. "That is the thing that matters most to me," he told a press conference. The actor said it was daunting playing one of his biggest heroes, particularly imitating Mandela's distinctive diction. "It was incredibly intimidating to play a man who loved his country more than he loved himself, his own youth," he said. Fiennes, who pulls off a pitch-perfect flat South African English accent, said he regretted not being able to have met Gregory, who died a few years ago, "because it is hard to know where the truth is." Gregory's widow Gloria, however, helped Kruger prepare for her role and August said he interviewed prison guards "and all possible other sources" for his research on the apartheid era. The director, who also made "The House of Spirits", said that because the book is such a tearjerker and Mandela has so much charm and humanity, he was wary of melodrama. But the prison warden's moral conversion comes too quickly in the film. His sudden readiness to break the rules and risk his job to smuggle a chocolate bar to Winnie Mandela for her husband beggars belief.
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