A Dry White Season

Such is definitely not the case with "A Dry White Season," which director Euzhan Palcy persuaded Brando to do for free. He was stirred by Palcy's commitment to a project that might effect social change. Palcy, a black woman born in Martinique and educated in Paris, also impressed Brando with her first film, "Sugar Cane Alley" (1984), a humanist drama about labor exploitation in Martinique.

Brando does only two scenes as the lawyer Ian McKenzie. In the first, he is visited in his office by Ben Du Toit (Donald Sutherland), a teacher. Du Toit is an Afrikaner, a member of South Africa's ruling white minority of European descent. The setting is Johannesburg in 1976; more than 4000 black children in the township of Soweto have been shot by the police for protesting against their inferior education. Du Toit has closed his eyes to the crimes. But when his gardener, Gordon (Winston Ntshona), and Gordon's young son die in police custody, Du Toit cannot accept suicide as the official cause of death. He asks McKenzie to go to court and prove the police guilty of torture and murder. Brando wisely plays against the scene's high emotion. McKenzie has lost too many similar cases. "Like a cup of tea?" he asks Du Toit in a pinched accent that seems incongruous, given his size. The rumpled McKenzie blows his nose prodigiously. He's allergic to the orchids that crowd his office, but he loves the flowers too much to part with them. The orchids are a clue to McKenzie's character. Commitment overcomes any inconvenience.

Du Toit wonders what this fragile giant can do in court. As well he might. McKenzie needs a cane to stand. But the wily warrior presents an overwhelming case. While questioning the monstrous Captain Stolz (Jurgen Prochnow), McKenzie exposes blistering bureaucratic evil. His backbone stiffens, his rheumy eyes snap into focus, his voice slashes through the cant. He is pure steel. Building the role slowly, with compassion and cunning wit, Brando is sensational. He is well worth Palcy's efforts to get him.

Brando is the reason many will see this film. Palcy knows that. She also knows that once he departs early on, it will be her job to keep them there. She's resoundingly up to the task. But oh, the odds. The two most recent movies about apartheid -- "Cry Freedom, A World Apart" -- failed to win an audience. They were criticized for centering on white protagonists at the expense of blacks.

Palcy hasn't entirely licked the problem. "A Dry White Season," a 1979 novel by South African writer Andre Brink, also concentrated on white consciousness-raising. But Palcy, who adapted the book, has made some crucial changes in focus. Du Toit, sympathetically acted by Sutherland, is still a major figure. We watch in horror as his wife (the excellent Janet Suzman) and daughter (Susannah Harker) turn against him, leaving only his young son (Rowan Elmes) in support. We're hopeful when a British journalist (Susan Sarandon) offers to help him nail the police. But Palcy has junked the love story between these two that weakened the book. Instead, she has brought another character to the fore. Zakes Mokae, the famed black South African stage actor now living in exile in America, has been cast as Stanley, a taxi driver with more on his mind than helping an Afrikaner wake up to reality. Mokae delivers a shrewdly perceptive performance as a man who will no longer stand by and watch his people being butchered. His chilling final scene, which calls to mind the climax of Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing," is sure to stir things up inside and outside of movie houses.

For Palcy, this is as it should be. Black South Africans are still being tortured and killed. The outraged Palcy doesn't flinch from showing the violence. It's there, along with the racist legacy of apartheid, to rock our complacency. "A Dry White Season" is nothing like its arid title. Euzhan Palcy, a remarkable talent, has kept her undeniably powerful film ablaze with ferocity and feeling.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 562

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(Posted: Feb 6, 2001)