Cry Freedom
Set during the late 1970’s during the apartheid era of South Africa, Director Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987) centers on the real-life events involving black activist Steve Biko and his friend Donald Woods, who initially finds Biko’s antiapartheid political rhetoric to be damaging, however once meeting and conversing with the activist, attempts to understand his way of life. In order to analyze Cry Freedom one must develop a brief understanding of what the Apartheid was and meant it to the African people. The word apartheid translates exactly to separateness, specifically in this case separateness between white and black people. Founders of apartheid, the South African National Party, have held control in South Africa since 1948. Their policy has been brutally imposed to ensure that the skin color of …show more content…
Throughout the film, a cop played by Matthew McConaughey moonlights as a hit man and agrees to kill the detested mother of a desperate drug dealer in exchange for a tumble with the young man 's virginal sister. Written with black humor the film does not so much as shock but provide a numbing and unsettling disgust to the viewer. Contrasting from violent films such as Taxi Driver, where violence is stylized and structured in such a way that it becomes necessary to relay the overlying message of the film, Killer Joe forces upon the viewer pain producing, wince inducing violence. In the case of this film the violence is of the kind that turns ones stomach when witnessing the unadulterated, harsh, brutality. By going further than necessary in its depiction of violence and sexual deviance, as displayed during Joe’s sexual engagement with the obviously underage Dottie. The stereotypes on display take away from the central message of the film, that there are individuals throughout society whom abuse their authorities to the detriment of those of the lower
Set during the late 1970’s during the apartheid era of South Africa, Director Richard Attenborough’s Cry Freedom (1987) centers on the real-life events involving black activist Steve Biko and his friend Donald Woods, who initially finds Biko’s antiapartheid political rhetoric to be damaging, however once meeting and conversing with the activist, attempts to understand his way of life. In order to analyze Cry Freedom one must develop a brief understanding of what the Apartheid was and meant it to the African people. The word apartheid translates exactly to separateness, specifically in this case separateness between white and black people. Founders of apartheid, the South African National Party, have held control in South Africa since 1948. Their policy has been brutally imposed to ensure that the skin color of …show more content…
Throughout the film, a cop played by Matthew McConaughey moonlights as a hit man and agrees to kill the detested mother of a desperate drug dealer in exchange for a tumble with the young man 's virginal sister. Written with black humor the film does not so much as shock but provide a numbing and unsettling disgust to the viewer. Contrasting from violent films such as Taxi Driver, where violence is stylized and structured in such a way that it becomes necessary to relay the overlying message of the film, Killer Joe forces upon the viewer pain producing, wince inducing violence. In the case of this film the violence is of the kind that turns ones stomach when witnessing the unadulterated, harsh, brutality. By going further than necessary in its depiction of violence and sexual deviance, as displayed during Joe’s sexual engagement with the obviously underage Dottie. The stereotypes on display take away from the central message of the film, that there are individuals throughout society whom abuse their authorities to the detriment of those of the lower