Film Review: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Rated M (mature themes, violence and coarse language). 141 minutes. Directed by Justin Chadwick. Screenplay by William Nicholson. Based on Nelson Mandela’s autobiography.

Verdict: A reverential, by-the-numbers biopic from which we learn almost nothing.

Depending on how many details of the subject’s life audiences are familiar with can change everything about the extent to which we engage with biopics on the big screen.

In the case of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected president, Nicholson cherry-picks key points to create an extensive catalogue of great man’s life and achievements. What he and Chadwick fail to do is reveal any insight into their subject’s mind – resulting in a ‘best of’ showreel that lacks any form of deep, critical psychological engagement with what drove the man.

That privilege is reserved for Naomie Harris’s (Skyfall) Winnie Madikizela (later Winnie Mandela). In concert with Idris Elba’s (Pacific Rim, Thor) imposing stride-through the title role, Harris blazes across the screen in a performance that encapsulates the rage against injustice that Winnie Mandela would later pay dearly for. Harris’s performance is blisteringly good, and in context, it’s impossible to believe that Mandela went through life’s ordeals with the same kind peaceful resolve he maintained in later life as one of the world’s great statesmen.

The scenes of his early life as a womanising, young lawyer who finds himself attracted to the revolutionary activities of the African National Congress (of which he would become leader) are biopic-by-the-numbers. Until we witness a very brief scene (sourced from archival footage) of a white woman being violently knocked to the ground in the street by black activists, do Chadwick or Nicholson want us to be overly concerned with all sides of the seriously conflicted points of view.

What we are left with, ultimately, is a long, reverential film that honours Mandela’s memory as much as it does the value of it something of a disservice.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.