Movies have a great way of promoting a country. They turn people on to the idea of travelling there. Crocodile Dundee sparked a whole generation of American tourists to Australia. After watching Mick Dundee tackling crocs and sweeping a New York broad off her feet, they wanted nothing more than a bit of Down Under action. It is the reason the Australian tourism board put millions into Baz Luhrmann’s Australia. It was a two-hour long ad for Oz. Unfortunately they backed the wrong horse. The storyline was so atrocious, it may have left people thinking Australia was as boring as the movie.
Now before you snigger at the misfortune of the Australian Tourism Board, our big cinematic hooray this year is the film version of Disgrace. But it is far from the ad campaign South Africa needs. Coetzee’s dark story of post-apartheid misery was bad enough as a book. Actually let me restate that, it was a good book, but the worst piece of long copy advertising for South Africa ever made. My wife is Australian. And when her mum read the book, she almost died. If she had been worried about me dragging her daughter off to South Africa before this, reading Disgrace sent her mind into overdrive. While the media reports of rape and murder may have scared her, this book personalised it. Made the story so much more intimate.
Now it’s a movie. With the big vistas and beautiful scenery shots. The type of shots that make us long to be somewhere. But then they are intercut with men abusing their power, women being raped, dogs being put down, loneliness, desperation and the loss of dignity. The only character who presents us with any real sense of humanity is a middle-aged lady who puts down dogs for a living. And they cast an Australian to play her. As if they looked at all of us and thought there is no one here who can portray hope, we’ll have to get someone in.
Disgrace the movie could not have come at a worse time. Especially with the World Cup coming and a worldwide recession already here. Tourists and potential investors are already suspicious. Just look at what Louis Taylor wrote in the Guardian two weeks ago. Her article was titled: Why going to South Africa for the World Cup terrifies me. Disgrace is the 90-minute technicolour expression of that thought.
The only glimmer of hope is that the film is actually not that good. Yes, the story is competently told. But, lucky for us, the director’s shooting style is more suited to the staged storytelling of a Wes Anderson film than a gritty human story like Disgrace. In the hands of a director like Mike Leigh or Ken Loach, who understand how to truly document human torment, no one would be coming to the World Cup next year.
What more can I say? Bring on Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman in Invictus — the feel-good story of the ’95 Rugby World Cup!
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