Moffie

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Movie
Original title Moffie
Country of production South Africa ,
United Kingdom
original language Afrikaans , English
Publishing year 2019
length 108 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Oliver Hermanus
script Oliver Hermanus,
Jack Sidey
production Eric Abraham ,
Jack Sidey
music Braam you Toit
camera Jamie D Ramsay
cut Alain Dessauvage
occupation

Moffie is a film drama directed by Oliver Hermanus , which premiered in 2019 as part of the Venice Film Festival . The film is based on the autobiographical novel Moffie: A Novel by André Carl van der Merwe, in which he describes the persecution of gay men during apartheid at the time of the South African border war.

action

18-year-old Nicholas van der Swart has known for a long time that he is different from the others. The year is 1981. Like all other white young men over the age of 16, Nicholas has to do two years of military service in the army of South Africa to defend the apartheid regime. After a farewell party, he takes the train to his place of work.

Despite his soft "English" appearance, Nicholas has an Afrikaans name. He took this over from his stepfather after his parents divorced. His birth father gave him a porn magazine in which he hid a photo of himself that Nicholas is keeping like treasure.

Military training is dehumanizing as the army tries to turn these boys into "men" and eradicate any trace of feminine or "weak" behavior. They are yelled at and asked not to be "moffies". While some of his colleagues are gradually being taken out of service, the tall and physically fit Nicholas can prove himself in the service. The punishment for recruits who get caught for indecent behavior with their comrades and who turn out to be too soft ranges from corporal punishment to placement in the dreaded Ward 22, a kind of insane asylum.

However, when training activities include naked swimming in a lake and sweaty, torso-free volleyball games, controlling the natural urge is easier said than done. During an exercise, Nicholas has to share the limited space in a trench with Dylan Stassen. You have to move very close together to avoid freezing. This intimate moment resulted in a quiet understanding between the two young men from now on.

The troops must move inland, to the border with Angola, to defend South Africa against communism, against the MPLA supported by the Soviet Union and against the "black threat".

Literary template

“As we move away from the kraal , a woman stumbles from her hut through an opening in the primitive fence. Her wailing, the painful wheezing as her scream ceases, runs through me. At that moment I know that I am suffering such great torments, which are so extensive that nothing in my nineteen years could have prepared me for it. "

- Description on the first page from Moffie: A Novel by Andre Carl van der Merwe
The parties in the South African border war

The film is based on the autobiographical novel by André Carl van der Merwe about his time in the army, which he published in 2006 under the title Moffie: A Novel . For this he used the diaries he kept as a teenager and during his military service. The novel transports the reader into the world of a young gay conscript, who ironically defends a regime that actively suppresses his identity, and takes place at the time of the South African border war, there also known as the "Angolan Bush War", which took place from 1966 to 1989 in South West Africa raged. In it the South African Defense Force (SADF) fought against the People's Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN). The war resulted in some of the greatest battles on the African continent since World War II and was closely linked to the Angolan Civil War . The war was allegedly fought by the apartheid government to protect against communism.

Van der Merwe describes the mission in question impressively on the first page of his book: “I ended up in hell […]. Forced to kill people I don't know for a reason I don't believe in. My best friend Malcolm is sitting next to me. We're the only soldiers in the back of the vehicle. We are the only ones who have never killed and we are the only ones who have not volunteered for this war life. The other soldiers chose this life. ”He dedicated the book to all those in the army who suffered from prejudice and the torture of Ward 22 and those who still suffer from it today.

“Moffie”, the title of the book, refers to the Afrikaans expression for a man who dresses and behaves like a woman.

production

Bar and film title

Directed by Oliver Hermanus , who together with Jack Sidey also wrote the screenplay based on van der Merwe's novel. When Hermanus first read van der Merwe's memoirs, he was quite taken with the texture and the details he recounted about this part of South African history: "I knew nothing about the treatment of gay conscripts, about the psychiatric" Department 22 "Or the damage the system did to so many men, and I had a strong feeling that Moffie had a power that had to be told on a big screen." At the center of his film is the one word "Moffie" that everyone uses South Africa living gay man knows. It was his wish to denuclearize this word with his film. Hermanus describes the term as “sissy” and “fagot” (English for “fagot”) in one word and a symbol for failed masculinity as well as for homosexuality itself. "Moffie" was interchangeable with "pedophile", marked a mistake and was a yardstick for the question: "Are you a man or not?" In this sense, the word is an important psychological tool in the arsenal of depersonalization and brutalization of the Bootcamps and a stamp to be avoided at all costs. Likewise, “communist” was interchangeable with “terrorist” and interchangeable with “black man”, as Hermanus observes: “ Apartheid created a very binary code.” Even if “Moffie” is usually simply translated as “fagot”, it lies the real meaning closer to the "N" word used to express outright hatred, according to Chris Machell on CineVue .

Script development

Even if Hermanus describes the attraction between the protagonist Nicholas and Strasser in his film, he deliberately downplayed the love story, which had a clearer romantic line in Van der Merwe's novel: "One of my most important rules from the start was that it was not a conventional one Love scene: It shouldn't be a relationship drama. " It was more important to him to build an understanding for this generation of men who went through a difficult time. It is in Moffie to Hermanus' second film with gay themes. Guy Lodge writes in Variety , Moffie and Hermanus' deeply disturbing 2011 film Beauty complemented each other in many ways. Both exposed the violent homophobia that prevails in the country's heavily patriarchal white Afrikaans population. However, they approached the subject from different angles. While Beauty focused on a self- despising gay African trapped in his own society, Moffie examines prejudice from the perspective of an English-born soldier learning to conform or to die.

Cast and filming

The main role of Nicholas van der Swart was cast with Kai Luke Brummer , played as a boy by Matt Ashwell . Brummer and the director agreed that Nicholas shouldn't look like a strong person. Therefore, Brummer began to lose weight at the beginning of the shooting and lost around 11 kilograms of body weight by the end of the shooting. The actor notes that during his childhood he was repeatedly referred to as "Moffie" on the playground for learning ballet. To be called "Moffie" in South Africa in 1981 was a completely different story. Nevertheless, Nicholas' experiences with his sexuality are not located in the distant past, but are still experienced by people today.

The rest of the cast consists of trained and amateur actors. The director had her spend a lot of time with a military advisor who guided her through a SADF boot camp. They were also trained in handling R1 rifles.

The shooting took place in summer 2018 in various locations in the South African province of Western Cape.

Film music and publication

The film music was composed by Braam du Toit , with whom Hermanus already worked for his film The Endless River . The recording was made over five days in a small church on the banks of the Bree River. Simran Hans from the Guardian explains that the composer's tense, dissonant string music conveys a feeling for an inner storm and underlines the portrayal of Hermanus' protagonist as a loner, especially at the beginning of the film. Jamie Dunn notes in his review that the atonal sounds seemed to come straight from the head of the terrified Nicholas, and that even the preferred hand - held close - ups of Jamie Ramsay would match this musical intensity, which is so intimate that the viewer can see the sweat seeps out of the pores of the actors. Classical pieces by Bach and Vivaldi in their most baroque form add to the feverish atmosphere of the film, continued Dunn.

The film was first screened on September 4, 2019 as part of the Venice Film Festival . In early October 2019 he was presented in the official competition at the London Film Festival . In January 2020 it was screened at the Palm Springs International Film Festival . Since the film had already been selected for the 55th edition of the Karlovy Vary Film Festival , but it was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, screenings took place in early July 2020 as part of the “KVIFF at Your Cinema” initiative, where it was one of 16 Films was shown for nine days in various cinemas in the Czech Republic. Performances in Germany are planned from the end of August 2020, for example at the Queer Film Festival in Cologne. Also at the end of August 2020, the film will be presented in competition at the Molodist International Film Festival , which will take place in a hybrid version. Screenings are also planned for the Zurich Film Festival , which will take place from September 24 to October 4, 2020 .

reception

Reviews

The film has so far been able to convince all Rotten Tomatoes critics and received an average rating of 7.8 out of a possible 10 points. Moffie was repeatedly compared to Full Metal Jacket and Moonlight and mostly described as a mixture of these two films. Parallels to Claire Denis ' film Beau Travail were also noted.

For example, Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian writes that how Denis was inspired in her 1999 film by the homoeroticism in Herman Melville's story Billy Budd in the context of the French Foreign Legion , Oliver Hermanus reacts directly to the beauty of male bodies, but most of the time the physicality shown is intimidating and violent. Bradshaw's colleague Simran Hans writes that an undeniable homoerotic charge runs through the scenes in which shiny male bodies are lavishly looked at, reminiscent of the graceful legionnaires in Denis' film. The quiet, withdrawn Nicholas feels attracted to the new recruit and provocateur Dylan Stassen, but Hermanus treats this love story only as a subtext in order to draw his attention to the visceral sadism of the South African National Defense Force and the emotional and physical toll of such to criticize toxic regimes.

Guy Lodge of Variety place Moffie is Hermanus' masterpiece has become, which in previous work summarized in this film all the promises and profundity to a staggering performance formal and narrative art and have established it as important as South Africa's contemporary filmmakers. In the funniest scene in the film, when soldiers play volleyball in their free time, which is clearly based on a match in Top Gun , the director and cameraman Jamie D Ramsay stylized the well-known wink subtext into a more open, uninhibited homoeroticism. A single, heartbreaking look back at Nicholas' childhood also shows why and how he learned to avert his gaze when such behavior in the shower rooms of a public swimming pool resulted in downright aggressive behavior.

Award

British Independent Film Awards 2019

Dublin International Film Festival 2020

  • Awarded the Dublin Film Critics Special Jury Prize

Venice International Film Festival 2019

  • Nomination for Best Film for the Venice Horizons Award (Oliver Hermanus)
  • Nomination for the Queer Lion (Oliver Hermanus)

London Film Festival 2019

  • Nomination in the competition

Molodist International Film Festival 2020

  • Nomination in the competition

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ release document for Moffie . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 200624 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Chad Armstrong: Film Review: Moffie. In: thequeerreview.com. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  3. ↑ a b c Roberto Igual: Moffie Q&A: Star Kai Luke Brümmer. In: mambaonline.com, March 4, 2020.
  4. ↑ a b c Guy Lodge: Venice Film Review: 'Moffie'. In: Variety, September 5, 2019.
  5. ^ André Carl van der Merwe: Moffie: A Novel . Europa Editions, 2006.
  6. ↑ Moffie. In: urbandictionary.com. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  7. ↑ Moffie. In: lexico.com. Retrieved October 28, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b Chris Machell: Film Review: Moffie. In: CineVue, April 23, 2020.
  9. ↑ a b El Broide: 5 Minutes With 'Moffie' Director Oliver Hermanus. In: peoplemagazine.co.za, January 28, 2020.
  10. ↑ Ben Walters: Oliver Hermanus on Moffie: "Apartheid created a very binary code". In: bfi.org.uk, April 26, 2020.
  11. ↑ Guy Lodge: 'It's a triggering film': visceral South African drama Moffie. In: The Guardian, April 15, 2020.
  12. ↑ Guy Lodge: Venice Film Review: 'Moffie'. In: Variety, September 5, 2019.
  13. ↑ a b Oliver Hermanus new film Moffie invited to Premiere at Venice International Film Festival. In: nfvf.co.za. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  14. ↑ Moffie - Oliver Hermanus. In: resonate-audio.com. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  15. ^ A b Simran Hans: Moffie review - brilliant, brutal South African apartheid drama. In: The Guardian, April 25, 2020.
  16. ^ A b Jamie Dunn: Moffie review: fear and desire on the front lines of Apartheid-era South Africa. In: bfi.org.uk, October 2, 2019.
  17. ↑ Moffie. In: bfi.org.uk. Retrieved August 29, 2019.
  18. ↑ 63rd BFI London Film Festival announces 2019 Official Competition selection. In: bfi.org.uk, August 30, 2019.
  19. ↑ Ben Dalton: BFI London Film Festival selects 10 titles for 2019 competition. In: screendaily.com, August 28, 2019.
  20. ^ Program booklet of the Palm Springs International Film Festival 2020. In: psfilmfest.org. Retrieved January 3, 2020 (PDF; 331 kB)
  21. ↑ Martin Kudláč: The Karlovy Vary International Film Festival goes local for a unique 2020 edition. In: cineuropa.org, May 25, 2020.
  22. ↑ a b 150 films: International film festival “Molodist” announced the program. In: cinema.in.ua, August 8, 2020.
  23. ↑ Moffie. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  24. ↑ Adam Solomons: Moffie Review. In: heyuguys.com. Retrieved April 29, 2020.
  25. ↑ Tara Brady: Moffie: White-knuckle view of homophobia in apartheid South Africa. Review: This film makes the training section of Full Metal Jacket seem less stressful. In: The Irish Times, April 24, 2020.
  26. ↑ Tracy E. Gilchrist: Gay Love Blooms in 1981 Wartime South Africa in Acclaimed Film Moffie. In: advocate.com, April 28, 2020.
  27. ↑ Peter Bradshaw: Moffie review - swooning eroticism in apartheid South Africa. In: The Guardian, April 23, 2020.
  28. ↑ Alex Ritman: Armando Iannucci's 'David Copperfield' Leads 2019 British Independent Film Awards Nominations. In: The Hollywood Reporter, October 30, 2019.
  29. ↑ Davide Abbatescianni: The Virgin Media Dublin International Film Festival Announces its award winners. In: cineuropa.org, March 9, 2020.
  30. ↑ 63rd BFI London Film Festival program announced. In: bfi.org.uk, August 29, 2019.