A Long Walk to Freedom Blog

1. In general, what did you like and dislike about the film?

I liked the way it portrays Mandela, a figure who one has always heard about in a legendary way. The fact that they showed the domestic violence he was involved in brings the figure back down to Earth, and reminds the viewer that this is a story about a flawed person, who should be admired for his  participation in the fight against Apartheid, but not in his quality as a person, who we don't know.

It is a limit that people sometimes forget. A clear example of this is the amount of people who stood outside courts with big signs with written messages declaring Michael Jackson's innocence. They were fans of his music, and didn't do the exercise of separating the music from the person, and understanding that the fact that he was a musical genious didn't mean he was a good person.

I liked that the film helps the viewer to understand a little more about Apartheid. However, I think it left out many things that would've been important to fully understand the struggle it meant for people of African descent. It would've been interesting to see more of Winnie's fight after Mandela's imprisonment. Also, I think the way the film built their love was simplistic and corny, and I think Winnie deserved to be presented in a less shallow way: she was a brave, fierce, intelligent woman, and I would've preferred to be introduced to her character more through those cualities than just through her beauty.

2. In your own words, how would you compare the "various Mandelas;" the ones from the article and the one from the film?

I think both are depicted in the film at different moments. The beginning of the movie shows the revolutionary Mandela, which is identified with him at a younger age. Then, the older Mandela, the one in jail and after his release, shows us the mythical image, which is more popular in the West. It was a Mandela that was tolerable and easy to be praised: a pacifist activist, instead of a revolutionary warrior. One imagines the first Mandela -the revolutionary- as angry and reckless, and the latter one as a happy, serene, thoughtful person. The movie shows the first Mandela practicing domestic violence, and the second one surrounded by a big, loving family (except for Winnie, who continues to support him but still has a more action-prone and aggressive stand, therefore disagreeing with his methods).

I feel that this transition in Mandela's Apartheid resistance is showed almost as if he'd "seen the light" while imprisoned, as if it was the consecuence of his ageing wisdom. He ends up being a saviour of South Africa, who still "fights" the brutal inequality and discrimination of the times, but with a moral high ground that the people who were still fighting (in a literal sense) the system didn't have. While I believe that the peaceful way is always ideal, it's not always realistic. The people who were fighting as Winnie was had come to the realization after years of protests that violence was needed to fight back such violent oppression, and this should hardly be judged as wrong or worse than the pacifist path by white people born in the western world, who haven't gone through anything remotely like what the african people in South Africa were going through.

The article deepens in how Mandela was ultimately seen by some as an "arch-betrayer", selling out the fight to capitalism and the tional party. 

3. What was the role that Winnie Mandela played in the film? Think about the contrast between her and the other ANC members.

4. How do you compare the role of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress in the struggle against the apartheid and in the post-apartheid South Africa to the Concertación and their role in the struggle against Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship and in post-dictatorial Chile?