hat’s
most refreshing about Catch a Fire isn’t its great
performances or heart-rending story, it’s the way the film portrays
Africans. Movies set on that continent so often reduce black
Africans to fly-infested Sally Struthers victims that you forget
there might be real people living there. Black African’s aren’t
uneducated, half-starved, sub-humans. They’re families with the same
concerns you have.
Catch a Fire shows that by telling the true story of
Patrick, an upstanding black South African living in 1978’s
oppressive regime of Apartheid. Patrick isn’t interested in
politics, or the underground freedom fighter movement sweeping the
country. He believes in caring for his family, and working hard. He
has a good job, and he’s earned it. He coaches a local soccer team,
he loves his wife. Catch a Fire lingers over his life, to
give us a real sense of who Patrick is and where he stands. Patrick
is a good and kind man, until he’s wrongfully accused of being a
terrorist by the country’s anti-terrorism task force.
By the time his name is cleared, he and his wife have gone through
weeks of beatings and torture. Many of Patrick’s friends and
co-workers are dead, murdered at the behest of the anti-terrorism
task force’s head Nic Vos (Tim Robbins). Patrick goes home, but
discovers that he can no longer be comfortable sitting on his couch,
sleeping in his bed, or simply earning a paycheck. He cannot live
with letting things stand. He’s seen first hand the system’s
injustice, and determined to make things right he abandons his
family and joins the rebel group fighting to make South Africa a
place for everyone.
Derek Luke is simply spectacular as Patrick, his evolution from
pillar of the community to terrorist is brilliant. Tim Robbins
steals scenes as South Africa’s anti-terrorist taskforce head, he’s
twisted and sympathetic all at once. While Patrick sees him as a
monstrous villain, the film shows things from his perspective too.
For him, he’s only doing what he does to protect his family. To keep
them safe, there’s no limit on who he’ll hurt or what he’ll do.
Ultimately, you get the sense that at first in some ways Patrick and
Nic are the same man. Both men care deeply about their families, and
love for that life is what pushes them. For Patrick it’s what kept
him going to work in the morning and keeping his head down while the
country erupts in flames. For Nic, the desire to protect his kids
makes him a monster. But after his wrongful arrest, Patrick realizes
there are more important things than simply keeping his family safe.
He asks Nic what his family will say about him when he’s gone. What
kind of man is he? Though he abandons them to fight South Africa’s
oppressive government, his children can hold their heads high when
they speak of their father. Nic keeps his family safe, but at what
cost? Patrick decides that he is no longer willing to pay that
price, and stands up to do what it right.
The
movie falters a little when Patrick transitions from family man
to rebel hero. Director Philip Noyce seems more comfortable with the
movie as a drama than he does with it as a thriller. Still, Derek
Luke’s amazing performance elevates the movie beyond any misstep,
making Catch a Fire an effective film. There’s a deeper,
politically motivated level here, one which examines what it takes
to make a terrorist and might lead one to compare what happens to
Patrick to what’s going on right now in Iraq. But whether or not you
choose to examine it from that perspective is up to you. The movie
works any way you want to see it.
View the original review at:
http://www.cinemablend.com/reviews/Catch-a-Fire-1879.html
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A few thoughts on forgiveness...
"Forgiveness is not an occasional act - it is an attitude of mind."
- Martin Luther King
"The noblest revenge is to forgive."
- Thomas Fuller, English author (1608-1661)
"Violence breeds violence, repression brings reta-liation, and only a
cleansing
of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul." ,
-so
eulogized
Robert Kennedy, after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
in
April 1968. |