Skin: Unwanted Among One's Own..
The unanimous and resounding international show of hands for the multi-award winning Skin bears testimony to the fact that South Africa is teeming with innumerable fascinating stories of the country's sordid past of human degradation, and of the sustaining ethics of forgiveness and reconciliation - which need to be shared with audiences throughout the world. This is a heart-rending (part fact-part mythic fiction) tale of Sandra Laing, a dark-skinned child born to a rural, storekeeping, Afrikaner couple whose customers were black and oppressed.
For the historic record, the legendary Jim Bailey, founder and owner of the once innovative Drum Magazine and the sensation-seeking Golden City Post newspaper - had a team of reporters who faithfully wrote stories of the ill-fated kinky-haired woman's 33-year agony under the apartheid racists whose rule began in 1948, and ended in 1994.
The ordeal of Sandra Laing's (Sophie Okonedo) anguish of harrowing misplacement in the country of her birth is coldly juxtaposed against the stubborn will and temper of her Afrikaner father's determination to have her reclassified white. The 'Never Give up' mantra of the late British Prime Minister Winston Churchill of the Second World War fame after the bombardment of the City of London by Germany, ironically becomes the rallying slogan between the girl-child Sandra and her irate father, Abraham Laing - portrayed in the film by the internationally-celebrated (Sam Neill).
Historically, the Laing roots were deeply embedded within the ethos, psyche and psychosis of the Nationalist Afrikaner tribe who had avidly abetted and spiritually supported Hitler's Nazi Germany before, during and after the Second World War.
The dramatization qualities of the leading actors – Okonedo, Neill and Alice Krige – who portrays Sannie Laing, Sandra's biological mother - are thoroughly believable, gripping, powerful and superlatively authentic to the political, cultural, and religious malaise and the temperament of the apartheid era.
The chief protagonist of Skin, Okonedo, is making waves in the film industry, for her powerful acting. She recently starred in The Secret Life of Bees alongside Queen Latifa, Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson, which received rave views on the Oprah Show. She has appeared in more than 20 television productions including stage performances and was nominated for an Oscar for her 2005 role in the outstanding film, 'Hotel Rwanda.'
The sensitive and commendable camera work in Skin, enhanced by the extreme close-ups on the lead actors, particularly Okonedo, were stunning - as was the lone sunset scene and the jiving knock-kneed 'marabi' dancer which took this scribe back to his cultural melting-pot days in Sophiatown and Western Native Township. It was a great feeling, to be being taken back in time.
Verily, Okonedo's kind comes once in a lifetime – and her face does it and says it all. The visit to her ailing, stroke-ridden mother, is a defining and telling portrayal of the nth proportions, as was the scene where the character, Sannie Laing takes the chocolate-coloured skin babe in her arms, and kisses her granddaughter – real heart-moving stuff especially for those of us who have known the pangs of human rejection, alienation and the race classification insanity that strangled human progress in our beautiful country.
There were countless victims of the pencil-and-pen ordeal which was chiefly aimed at South Africans of mixed blood origins – just like the real Sandra Laing had experienced. Many people, countrywide, were forced by the apartheid government to re-apply for new Coloured identity documents.
The Nazi-inspired geneticists of the then Afrikaner National Party had devised special biological diagrams for cranium, face and lip measuring instruments with which they would classify and reclassify other human beings – into one racial pigeon-hole and out of another. The film, Skin, touched only the periphery of that sickening policy.
Myths and fiction, when they are being employed to elevate a storyline, should sometimes be injected with needles of authenticity. The bulldozing scene was not authentic enough to rub the historic racial salt in the wound. Similarly, the three or four minute placard political protests scenes depicted were far cries from the real thing.
Although the acting of (Ella Ramangwane) as the 10-year-old Sandra was outstanding, touching and believable, I was somewhat disappointed by the language choices in the interpretation of young Sandra. The typical and traditional 'Cape Coloured' accent of the girl-child should have been nearer to the Afrikaner twang of her classmates to reflect her Afrikaner origins. Similarly, a great deal more dialogue coaching in the Afrikaans accent would have helped in our suspension of disbelief for Okenedo's interpretation of the adult woman.
Of course, foreign audiences would not notice the difference, and I surmise that director Anthony Fabian and his casting, language and dialogue teams did not think this was important. In my opinion, Skin should have been produced entirely in Afrikaans – even if it meant losing a star-studded professional such as Sophie Okonedo.
But all in all, the film is a shining gem of superlative dramatization about a most harrowing and deeply touching story.
A stanza from one of the poems written by this critic about human alienation in South Africa, reads:
"There is no hurt
Quite, like being unloved,
Unwanted,
Among one's own,
In one's own Land…"
That, in a few words, is the tragic tale and history of the real Sandra Laing and of the inestimable millions of South Africa's apartheid victims – white and black.
Skin
Duration: 102min
Director: Anthony Fabian
Cast: Sophie Okenedo, Alice Krige and Sam Neil
Writers: Helen Crwley, Jessie Keyt and Helena Kriel
Producers: Jessie Keyt, Helena Kriel, Anthony Fabian and Genevieve Hofmeyr
Opens: 22 January 2010
