'In My Country' - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

'In My Country': Awkward romance dilutes tale of apartheid aftermath

By BOB TOWNSEND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Is it a docudrama about South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings? Or is it love story? The problem with "In My Country" is that it tries to be both. And that clunky combo undermines what should have been an important film about race, violence and forgiveness.

Sony Pictures Classics

'In My Country'

C-

The verdict: Apartheid and romance make strained bedfellows.

Director: John Boorman
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Juliette Binoche, Brendan Gleeson
Run time: 104 minutes
Release date: April 1, 2005
Rating: R for language, including descriptions of atrocities, and for a scene of violence.
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Certainly, those issues are all over "In My Country," a fictional film based on the nonfiction book "Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa" by Afrikaans poet and journalist Antjie Krog. But with a leaden script that has costars Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson mouthing big statements more than acting, director John Boorman ("Deliverance," "Hope and Glory") wends his way between teaching and titillating, finally settling for the idea that we are all guilty in one way or another.

Winsome and teary-eyed to the point of cloying, Binoche plays Anna, a poet who takes an assignment to cover the commission's public hearings for South African state radio. She travels around the country to witness what amounts to a series of Nuremberg-type trials, in which black victims of apartheid atrocities confront their white tormentors — and in turn, the Afrikaans are given amnesty for admitting to their crimes and claiming they were "following orders."

That forgiveness is rooted in the South African principle of "ubuntu," a path of reconciliation rather than revenge. But churlish Washington Post reporter Langston Whitfield, played by Jackson in full-on anger mode, doesn't abide that kind of justice and goes digging for his own bits of truth.

When Anna and Langston meet, sparks begin to fly as he challenges her to defend her people in light of the terrible horrors of torture, mutilation and murder that are being uncovered day after day in the hearings. But instead of using that tension to consider the complexities of the South African situation, "In My Country" has Anna and Langston finding their own, more carnal form of ubuntu, as they soon begin a taboo love affair.

Both are married with children, but that doesn't seem to matter when they go off for a surreal interlude at Anna's parents' ranch — where Anna's mother gives Langston an autographed volume of Langston Hughes poetry. And in one the film's weirdest moments, an elderly black ranch hand actually utters the line, "Guess who's coming to dinner?"

In addition to the often jarring juxtaposition of the graphic testimony in the hearings and the awkward love scenes between Binoche and Jackson (who project wooden embarrassment more than passion), Boorman intermittently cuts to a succession of interviews between Langston and a fictional high-ranking police officer — played with gruesome glee by Brendan Gleeson. He mocks Langston's outrage, telling him that torture is "better than sex."

But his taunting disclosures finally lead Langston to a secret compound. And a couple of plot twists later, "In My Country" ends with a sudden burst of violence, which seems to be a rather fitting, if nihilistic, way to end a botched film.