6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
The life of Winnie Mandela from her childhood through her experience as a social worker in Johannesburg, where she met and married Nelson Mandela, who was then imprisoned for 27 years by the South African government for his opposition to apartheid. Mrs. Mandela took up her husband's cause and was herself persecuted and imprisoned.
Starring: Jennifer Hudson, Terrence Howard, Wendy Crewson, Elias Koteas, Lawrence JoffeDrama | 100% |
History | 50% |
Biography | 47% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English, English SDH, Spanish
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 2.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.5 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Director Darrell Roodt's 2011 film adaptation of the life of Winnie Mandela, the first wife of former political prisoner and South Africa's first black president, was beset by controversy from its inception. Mrs. Mandela herself objected to the production, protesting that she had not be consulted about the film or the script, which Roodt and executive producer Andre Pieterse adapted from the biography by Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob. Many South African actors protested the casting of Americans Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard in the lead roles of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, a decision no doubt attributable to the international co-financing that allowed filming to proceed and the necessity of having familiar names for marketing purposes. The film was poorly received at the Toronto Film Festival in 2011 and only received distribution under the auspices of T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House, an American megachurch. Poor reviews greeted the Canadian release in October 2012, after which Image/RLJ Entertainment acquired U.S. distribution rights. The film did not fare any better during its limited U.S. release in September 2013. Winnie Mandela has much to recommend it. It has epic scale, with gorgeous locations, thousands of extras and over a hundred speaking parts. Roodt is a native of South Africa and an experienced director, whose credits include Cry the Beloved Country and Serafina! Terrrence Howard's portrayal of Nelson Mandela over a period of nearly forty years, tracing the arc from young agitator to the calm figure of wisdom and sorrow who emerges from twenty-seven years in prison is convincing and impressive. And Jennifer Hudson effectively captures the steel of a woman who survived over 400 days in solitary confinement (something her husband never endured), along with the anger and the mystery that continue to make Mrs. Mandela a polarizing figure and necessitated the divorce between her and Nelson so that he could be a credible president. The problem with Roodt's film is that it tries to be too many things at once—love story, classical tragedy, historical epic, morality tale—and ends up succeeding at none of them. To the extent Winnie Mandela inspires viewers to delve into the chaotic and bloody history of these all-too-recent events, the film can serve a valuable purpose, but as a dramatic experience it remains unsatisfying.
Shot on film by Canadian cinematographer Mario Janelle (graduating from second unit work on such films as Upside Down), Winnie Mandela was finished on a digital intermediate, from which Image/RLJ's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray was presumably sourced. The image is crisply defined and razor sharp, with a smooth, nearly grainless appearance that could almost be mistaken for digital photography (which seems to be the goal of most contemporary DI colorists). A golden glow suffuses most of the outdoor scenes, even in Nelson Mandela's Robben Island prison quarry, where the sunlight suggests hope more than heat. The color palette is vivid and intense, and both the production design and the post-production have conspired to draw disproportionate attention to Winnie Mandela's evolving wardrobe, which results in a sharp exchange between her and the judge at Nelson's trial. While the historical photographs accompanying the end credits suggest that this design may be accurate, it's a questionable visual strategy, because it invests too much of the character in her outfit and distracts from the woman herself. (It's the African equivalent of a society column that begins by describing what each lady wore to a luncheon.) Still, this isn't a fault of the Blu-ray, which conveys the multitude of colors in both Winnie's wardrobe and that of others (including her notorious "football team") without bleeding or oversaturation. The landscapes, streets of Johannesburg and grim interiors of prisons also get the appropriate hues and shadings. Beyond any adjustments made at the DI stage, there is no indication of high frequency filtering or other untoward digital manipulation. Image continues its habit of using BD-25s wherever possible, holding the average bitrate at 19.99 Mbps for this 107-minute film, but the presence of black letterbox bars and of sufficient scenes involving quiet conversation seem to have afforded the compressionist enough space to avoid artifacts.
The film's original 5.1 soundtrack is presented in lossless DTS-HD MA. The English dialogue is very clear, and the less frequent dialogue in either Xhosa or, occasionally, Afrikaans is translated by non-switchable English subtitles. Several major crowd scenes of demonstrations and attacks on demonstrators by the police make effective use of the surrounds and, in some instances, the LFE channel to emphasize the scale of the confrontation and the threat from the authorities. Certain specific locales like the huge courtroom have subtle ambiant qualities that distinguish them from everyday situations. The soundtrack by French composer Laurent Eyquem (Copperhead) is beautiful but unfortunate. It has the sweep and warmth of a historical romance, which is the wrong tone for Winnie Mandela. The same can be said of the Diane Warren song "Bleed for Love", which Jennifer Hudson sings over the end credits. The film should end with something haunting and tragic, and that's not what Warren writes or Hudson sings.
I remember when many of the events depicted in Winnie Mandela were being reported in the news. It seemed even then that conflicts of Shakespearean dimension lay just beneath the headlines, waiting for a dramatist of sufficient skill and insight to shape them into a coherent narrative. Roodt and Pieterse have attempted to do so, but they may be too close to the material. They have jammed a miniseries' worth of events into a 107-minute film, and the result is superficial. Mrs. Mandela's story has yet to be brought to full dramatic life. Recommended only for its technical qualities and, perhaps, as an introduction to a turbulent and deadly chapter in recent history.
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