In
1969, a stage play Boesman & Lena indicting
South Africa’s apartheid was performed in South Africa; in
1970, off Broadway. A film followed in 1974. Some twenty-five
years later Boesman & Lena has been brought
to the screen again by director John Berry, who died late
last year. Danny Glover stars as Boesman and Angela Bassett
as Lena. Now that apartheid has been abolished, the movie
seems an odd anachronistic relic for the year 2000. The story
is about a "colored" couple (blacks with some white blood)
who have been bulldozed from their shantytown homes near Capetown
on several occasions, forced to live from the proceeds of
recycled bottles, some of which they empty themselves, to
the point where they are non compos mentis. Most of the film
takes place along the shoreline of the Swartkops River, where
the married couple have found a place to stay for the night.
Featuring flashbacks to earlier times in their lives, both
happier and more tragic, most of the film consists of a dialog
between Boesman and Lena in which the latter bitterly blames
the former for the uncertainty of their lives. Boesman, happy
to be "free" from the fear that their home will be bulldozed
again in the middle of the night, not only refuses to console
her but often antagonizes her. Lena, however, overacts and
screams hysterically to such an extent that filmviewers will
be so annoyed at her bickering that they will understand that
Boesman has beaten her in the past. The sudden appearance
of a Xhosa tribesman (played by Willie Jonah), who dies in
the middle of the night alongside her, adds fuel to the fires
raging inside her, and it is easy to lose sympathy for her
plight; indeed, she urges Boesman to kill her the next time
he tries to beat her in order to end her psychological suffering.
Boesman then flees from Lena, fearing that he will be charged
with murdering the Khosa, but does not go very far. In contrast
with the somber ending of the original play, in the morning
Boesman and Lena are reconciled; she takes his hand, and they
wander on to their next temporary lodging, consisting again
of pieces of scrap metal assembled to make shelter from sudden
rainstorms. The production, in short, is not much more than
a filmed stage play. MH
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