Color of Freedom,The (DVD)

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Based on the book "Goodbye Bafana: Nelson Mandela, My Prisoner, My Friend" by the real life James Gregory, "The Color of Freedom" follows the former prison warder´s relationship with the equal rights advocate through Mandela´s nearly three decades under arrest in South Africa. Regardless of the controversy surrounding the novel-and, by extension, the film-director Bille August´s interpretation sports three impressive performances and riveting narrative while covering a twenty year relationship between Gregory and Mandela.

At the center of the film is apartheid, a legal racial separation of people in South Africa which lasted for roughly fifty years. In the broadest terms possible, blacks in the time of apartheid were not allowed any rights and needed, among other things, to carry a pass giving them access to white areas. If they were caught without a pass, they were arrested. Nelson Mandela (played here by Dennis Haysbert), a lawyer, was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to Robben Island, a prison. Here, he meets censorship officer Gregory, charged with keeping tabs on prisoner visits and correspondence. Gregory (Joseph Fiennes) is a prejudiced man, though not as much as his wife, Gloria (Diane Kruger). After a trip to the mainland where their two children see several brutal arrests, she explains to their daughter God does not want blacks and whites to mix. It is unnatural.

Part history lesson, part personal drama, "The Color of Freedom" serves as an primer on South African history. Any of the characters outside the "big three" (Haysbert, Fiennes and Kruger) are merely background decoration with a couple lines each. The film tries to deviate from the central story-that of James and Gloria´s "conversion" from segregationists to integrationists-a couple of times by including details of his police service. But we´re not really here to see a man get promoted. The production works best when any combination of these three actors is on screen at any given point.

There are indications Gregory doesn´t share the apartheid government line, from his black childhood friend to the way he goes easier on the prisoners on Robben Island than the other warders. He automatically becomes a sympathetic character based on these, and other, small moments littered through the early part of the film. When the detained are being mistreated, he never engages in the mistreatment. He is respectful-almost to a fault-of Mandela´s wife when she visits. Gregory even seeks out banned material (the Freedom Charter) to read it for himself in an attempt to truly understand what Mandela wants. Fiennes plays him with a passion and intensity, smoldering just under the surface. It comes through his expressive brown eyes, usually partially covered by his police cap.

As we watch his feelings toward Mandela change over the course of the film, it all seems a bit too rushed, too fast. August relies on tried and true techniques to showcase the passage of time: mustaches, hair coloring, uniform variations, all of which work, but none can make up for what is left out of the story. If the narrative didn´t have the perverse need to cover so much territory in a relatively short amount of time, we would be able to see a more natural evolution to the attitudes. It is understood James isn´t militantly anti-black as his wife and colleagues seem to be, but is the turning point in his life the arrest of a mother in front of his own children in the street? Is it the proverbial straw that broke the camel´s back? We don´t see much internal turmoil, just scenes allowing a sideways glance, a grimace or scowl.

There is also a brief moment where the ignorance of the situation comes into focus. A mild disagreement erupts in the censorship office regarding the Freedom Charter. Gregory and a colleague know what they have been told it says, yet neither has actually read it. This, inevitably, leads James to seeking out the document, only to find what they were told is merely propaganda. It is an important moment leading to his eventual conversion.