Is it a docudrama about South Africa's post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings? Or is it love story? The problem with In My Country is that it tries to be both.
In My Country (2005)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:80
Fresh:18
Rotten:62
Average Rating:4.8/10
Consensus: A well-intentioned but melodramatic look at post-Apartheid South Africa.
Runtime: 1 hr 44 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a Washington Post journalist. His editor provocatively sends him to South Africa to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in which the... Langston Whitfield (Samuel L. Jackson) is a Washington Post journalist. His editor provocatively sends him to South Africa to cover the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, in which the perpetrators of murder and torture on both sides during the Apartheid era are invited to come forward and confront their victims. By telling the unvarnished truth and expressing contrition, they may be granted amnesty. Can the deep wounds of Apartheid be healed through reconciliation? Langston is deeply sceptical. He tracks down Col. De Jager, the most notorious torturer in the SA Police and tries to penetrate the mind of a monster, an experience that obliges him to confront his own demons. Anna Malan (Juliette Binoche), is an Afrikaans poet who is covering the hearings for radio. As a white South African she is shattered by the accounts of the cruelty and depravity committed by her fellow countrymen. Anna and Langston must both question their sense of identity. Where do they each belong? How responsible are they for what is done in the name of their respective countries? The moving testimony of the victims affects them deeply. In different ways they are both estranged from their families, and their shared experience draws them ever closer to each other. It is a story charting the unfathomable depths of human cruelty and the redeeming power of forgiveness and love. -- © Sony Pictures Classics [More]
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Samuel L. Jackson, Brendan Gleeson, Menzi "Ngubs" Ngubane
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Samuel L. Jackson, Brendan Gleeson, Menzi "Ngubs" Ngubane
Director: John Boorman
Director: John Boorman
Screenwriter: Ann Peacock
Producer: Robert Chartoff, Mike Medavoy, Kieran Corrigan
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Reviews for In My Country
Need[s] to be seen, as essential history and as demonstration of a form of social reckoning where compassion triumphs over passion, and the olive branch over the gun.
Failing to get beyond trite Hollywood romantic conventions, sermonizing caricatures and 'I was just following orders' explanations does a great disservice to history.
A really bad movie about a really important subject is twice the artistic crime -- because, however well-intentioned, it trivializes human suffering while squandering a teaching opportunity.
Worth seeing for many reasons, including for the obvious educational aspects.
An atmosphere of stilted self-importance chokes just about every scene.
An academic dis-cussion punctuated by shots of magnificent countryside harboring unspeakable grief.
Important for what it teaches about revenge, justice and forgiveness. But you'll have to ignore the goofiness.
A series of brief, appallingly simplistic vignettes that, rather than conveying the depth and complexity of South Africa's history and culture, distill it to the point of distortion.
Watching it is like drinking a glass of Alka-Seltzer before the tablet is dissolved. Afterward, you're glad you drank it -- it wasn't that hard to swallow -- but you would've preferred a nice chardonnay.
Unquestionably sincere, but it doesn't do the subject justice in either the African or the western sense of the phrase.
Captivating while it lasts, and exceeds the majority of the year's lackluster cinematic offerings in terms both of ambition and execution.
What do you say about a dramatically woeful movie whose heart and politics are in the right place? Well, you sigh as you turn your thumb downward.
As an instrument for peace, let's applaud Boorman's effort. As a film that works on all levels? Let's not.
A stirring, large-souled movie about an event that was both an exposure of horror and a celebration of forgiveness.
High-minded and tin-eared, it finds one of our greatest blood-poets staggering around "forgiveness," unable to suss out a visual vocabulary for this strange, new language.
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