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The Crisis and Salvation of Telling the Truth
Sony Classics: released 2005 and now available on DVD 2006
Produced by: Lynn Hendee and Bob Chartoff
Directed by: John Boorman
Starring: Juliette Binoche and Samuel L. Jackson
Based on Antie Krog's novel "Country of My Skull"
In My Country is set in South Africa in 1994 after the fall of Apartheid, the brutal regime that had been set up to favor the nation's 10% white citizenry. Newly elected President Nelson Mandela, in a move that is as pragmatic as it is enlightened, has just created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, (TRC). The TRC is to be a series of public national hearings in which all citizens, regardless of their skin tone, will have the opportunity to tell the truth about what happened during Apartheid.
The movie stars Juliette Binoche as Anna Malan, a white Afrikaans poet, and Samuel L. Jackson as Langston Whitfield, an African American reporter on assignment to cover the TRC for the Washington Post. Anna, whose family directly benefited from Apartheid, hopes that the truth alone will give the country a clean slate, a new start. Langston, who is African but American in his thinking, hopes for a more punitive, legalistic form of justice. Anna and Langston clash instantly. However, as they wend their way across South Africa, their relationship, like their lives, become transformed.
The TRC was enacted at a time when the entire country was so deeply engrained in mistrust and injustice that all of its citizens were traumatized. We therapists who work with a systems approach to trauma are familiar with the roles people have taken on in this movie - mainly, those of victims, perpetrators and bystanders. These roles, which had been taken on to politically survive in the unhealthy atmosphere of Apartheid, had left South Africa's citizens feeling fragmented, despairing and less than human.
The TRC succeeded where many post-war tribunals did not. Perhaps it was because it was conducted through a uniquely African cultural lens - one which you can also sense by watching this movie. Foremost in this approach was the African spiritual and philosophical concept of Ubuntu, which means "a person is a person through other people."
As the hearings moved from township to township, it was Ubuntu that helped them to accept that no matter what had happened to them or what they had done to others, in their neighbor's shoes, they too would probably have followed the same dictates of group survival. Logically, in order to become human again, you would find the lost parts of yourself in the truths of those to whom you had lost all understanding. In a way, the TRC was rather like a psychic lost and found. But instead of going to therapy to share your truth and your feelings, you had to share them with those who you had harmed or who had harmed you.
Truth telling, as we know, has its pitfalls and complexities, which also come out in this movie. As Dumi, Anna's black South African assistant, tries to explain to an angry Langston, "It's not that simple, bro. It's not always black and white. Sometimes it's gray."
How is Ubuntu relevant to us? First, those whom we see have often been compromised, not only by abuse and trauma but also by the lies that were used to cover up the truth. Our patients often come in feeling isolated and unsure of their own reality. To be a good bridge for them, we need to not only have the capacity to bear witness to their stories but to hold their truth for them, and truth can be a very messy thing. It can be blunt and it can reactivate both our patient's as well as our own carefully guarded traumas. But it can also lead to salvation.
As the Truth and Reconciliation Hearings move across the country, Anna and Langston experience and re-experience the price that Apartheid's unjust and divisive policies have taken on every element of society. What messages can we take away from a movie about give and take when we live in a country where our government lulls us with tales of our national greatness and where our worth is based on our wallets, color and culture? Are we politically that much different than the blinkered, by-standing Afrikaaners were during apartheid?
In My Country is beautifully photographed movie. Laced with African song, it evokes not only the spirit of the country but also the spirit of those who listen to it. This movie is also full of twists of plot and local dialectic, which sometimes distracted me from the deeper questions that are raised, so if you rent this movie you might like to see it more than once. As films go, In My Country captured my attention in a way that few movies have. I highly recommend it.
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