Shame (2008)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | shame |
| Original title | Disgrace |
| Country of production |
Australia , South Africa |
| original language | English , Xhosa , Afrikaans , Zulu |
| Publishing year | 2008 |
| length | 120 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Steve Jacobs |
| script | Anna Maria Monticelli |
| production |
Emile Sherman , Steve Jacobs , Anna Maria Monticelli |
| music |
Anthony Partos , Graeme Koehne |
| camera | Steve Arnold |
| cut | Alexandre de Franceschi |
| occupation | |
| |
Shame (original title Disgrace ) is based on the novel of the same name by JM Coetzee based drama from 2008. Directed by Steve Jacobs , the screenplay was written by Anna Maria Monticelli .
The drama premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2008, where it received the International Critics Award.
action
David Lurie is Professor of English Literature at Cape Town University . He is divorced, his grown daughter lives with a friend in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa in the pre-school era. David visits prostitutes, but also uses his position as a professor to pressure and seduce Melanie, one of his students. He likes the role of the amoral esthete and Lord Byron fan. When David is reported by her boyfriend and father about the affair with Melanie, the university management hears it. David lets the indictment run nowhere by pleading guilty and giving up his professorship without a fight. He rejects a confession of repentance with a mixture of pride and serenity.
He travels to the Eastern Cape to see his daughter Lucy, who is happy to see her father again and tells him that her friend has left her. Lucy makes a living from selling home-grown flowers at a weekly market. Her black neighbor Peter seems to stand by her and take her under his wing in her loneliness. He also takes care of the three big dogs that Lucie should also protect.
One day, however, three black young men come out of a kraal ; one of them, Pollux, is almost a child. They want to make a phone call and use this pretext to attack David and Lucy. David only notices that two of the three black people behind him and Lucy are pulling the door shut. He chases one of the dogs on the third straggler, but is himself knocked down and locked in the toilet. When he comes to, he sees through the window how the three violent criminals are taking his car. You see it, pour denatured alcohol over it and set it on fire. He can extinguish the fire with water from the toilet in which he sticks his head. When Lucy opens the door for him after a while, she is disturbed and silent, completely changed.
David's burns are being healed and not too severe. Lucy calls on the police, but doesn't expect much from it. When David's car is found, they drive there. But it's a different one. Since the attack, David has mistrusted his neighbor Peter, because he was apparently by chance absent during this incident, and this mistrust is even greater when Pollux, one of the perpetrators, turns up at a party that Peter gives. David wants to call the police, but Lucy forbids him.
When her father asked if she had talked to a doctor about everything, Lucy replied that she had talked to a doctor about everything. This “everything” is not defined in more detail, it can include physical and mental injuries, pregnancy and AIDS infection. David feels the need to make himself useful. An elderly vet who catches stray dogs on the side, cares for them and then euthanizes them , can use him: He disposes of the dog's corpses for cremation. She is grateful to him, they start a relationship.
Then David goes back to Cape Town one more time. He asks the Melanie family for forgiveness, but then visits a performance of the theater in which Melanie appears in a Schwank . Here Melanie's boyfriend clings to his heels and threatens him. David visits his former apartment and finds it unoccupied but devastated. A resumption of his previous life is out of the question.
When he returns to his daughter, she tells him that she is pregnant from repeated rape , does not want an abortion and wants to formally marry the neighbor Peter. Petrus wants to protect the underage rapist Pollux - who belongs to his family - but also wants to put Lucy and her child under his protection. In addition, Lucy Petrus wants to bequeath her land and live there as his tenant. David informs his daughter that he will stand by her, but cannot believe so much resignation and unresisting submission and a short time later collapses in front of her house in a fit of tears. He leaves Lucy and moves in with the vet.
When he once again disposed of dog corpses, he was drawn back to his daughter, who was now heavily pregnant, and whom he secretly admired for her actions. The film ends with the scene that Lucy invites her father to tea in her house, which he accepts.
dramaturgy
Like the novel, the film also adheres to the perspective of David Lurie, who z. B. - locked in the toilet - not aware of the rape of his daughter. The film viewer does not find out more about this than David Lurie - a discretion that benefits the tension and the sympathy, especially in Lucy's fate. The longer the film lasts, this grows in her willingness to suffer beyond her father as a hero figure. The ending is markedly different from the novel: While the novel puts the euthanasia of a dog that is particularly dear to David at the end and precedes the scene in which Lucy invites her father to tea, the film reverses the order so that the suggestion of a reconciliation or at least rapprochement between father and daughter occupies the important final position. Certain basic themes of the novel, such as the dog's life , which is compared with the human, are implemented very carefully by the film, others, such as David's attempt to use his banjo to write an opera about Lord Byron in Italy, are only hinted at.
Reviews
“Director Steve Jacobs enchants his viewers with breathtaking landscapes of South Africa. […] Malkovich shines as a professor who takes every literary text meticulously under the microscope, while in real life he overlooks important social developments. […] Malkovich skillfully manages not to cast any shadows on newcomer Jessica Haines. Even though it's her first role in a feature film, she's incredibly compelling and very talented. […] Director Jacobs […] chose a difficult subject, but he staged it with flying colors. [...] Shame is a film that tells of the rule of a class, shows the differences between love and sex and asks questions. "
“Steve Jacobs' imagery, his cool and distant staging correspond exactly to the unsettlingly factual tone of the book. But the Australian director has not only meticulously captured the disturbing atmosphere of the novel, he has also found an actor in John Malkovich whose mannerisms perfectly match the character of the vain professor. David Lurie feels doomed to loneliness himself. But he can hardly wait for pity. In contrast to the country in which he lives and which he no longer understands. A country where violence never ends. She was just looking for new victims. Conclusion: A harrowing film about hatred and retribution - and the hope for reconciliation. "
Awards
- Toronto International Film Festival 2008: "International Critics Award"
- International Middle East Film Festival in Abu Dhabi : "Black Pearl"
Web links
- Shame on the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ movie review by Heike Maleschka / Filmreporter.de. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on July 20, 2009 ; Retrieved August 17, 2009 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Cinema.de: film review
