Mandela Reviews

This 1987 Philip Saville film chronicles human-rights activist Nelson Mandela's struggle against apartheid policy in South Africa. When director Saville shot the film, apartheid was still in force in South Africa, and Mandela was still in jail; thus, the cooperation of the South African government was out of the question. Nevertheless, to create an air of authenticity, Saville shot the film in Zimbabwe, which borders South Africa on the northeast. He also set the trial (in which Mandela was unjustly found guilty of treason) in a courtroom in Zimbabwe's capital, Harrare. Saville used African actors (including Tam Mpofu, Priscilla Mundawarara, and Mbuso Pityana) and filmed scenes in the homes of African citizens. In the starring role of Mandela, American actor Danny Glover invests his performance with his own abhorrence of separatist racial policy, and he presents a Mandela of courage, dignity, and resolve. Students of history will like the scope of the film: It begins when apartheid began, in 1948, and provides an overview of events thereafter. In the early 1990s, a few years after the film debuted, Mandela was released from jail, apartheid ended, and Danny Glover went to Africa to sit down and have breakfast with the very man he portrayed.