Friday, 04/22/05

Hollywood rules over history in 'My Country'

The great filmmaker John Boorman, of Deliverance, Hope and Glory and The Tailor of Panama, trips over his own good intentions with In My Country, a tone-deaf romance set amid the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa just after apartheid ended.

It's almost a white South African apologia, its message blurted out by a white farmer who's just shot a black cattle rustler in the film's first scenes.

''I hate them for forcing me to point a gun at another human being.''

Yeah, darn them anyway.

That farmer is brother to Anna (Juliette Binoche), an Afrikaner poet and liberal who is hired to do radio commentaries and reporting on the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Commission was set up to hear amnesty appeals by those whites and blacks involved in atrocities during the long civil war between the country's white minority government and blacks fighting that government.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Langston, a cynical, race-baiting Washington Post reporter sent to cover the traveling hearings, which toured in caravans from town to town, taking emotional testimony from survivors of torture, the relatives of those murdered in custody and the white policemen who carried out this ''anti-terrorist'' terror campaign.

Anna and Langston spit opinions at one another from the moment they meet. She understands the purpose of the hearings and where they fit within African and Afrikaner culture. He doesn't want to hear it.

''So, tell me, what is African justice? You just say you're sorry?''

But the graphic eyewitness accounts trouble the reporters. And as they travel and joust, they are drawn to one another.

Boorman never settles on a tone that works. This is a serious subject, but the courtroom testimony, while graphic, is rarely compelling.

The script, based on a book by real-life poet-journalist Antje Krog, has hints of a great lesson in forgiveness that those hearings, which she actually covered, promised. But just when you think a point is about to be made about the shared heritage, culture and connections of white and black South Africans, the heavy hand of the screenwriter makes itself felt.

Binoche can't give a bad performance, though she can read bad lines or play a badly written scene. Jackson is more interesting here than he's been in a dozen movies where all he had to do was talk and pose tough.

Civil wars are difficult subjects to straddle. Trying to do it is commendable. But failing to get beyond trite Hollywood romantic conventions, sermonizing caricatures and ''I was just following orders'' explanations does a great disservice to history.