Mandela and de Klerk

"A Dry White Season," "Bopha!," "Sarafina!," and "Cry Freedom" are all movies about South African apartheid which I watched before "Mandela and de Klerk," yet they didn't make this movie any easier to watch. "Mandela and de Klerk," unlike the aforementioned movies, focuses on Nelson Mandela (obviously). Because it focuses more on Mandela and his contributions from behind bars we don't see as many atrocities that were committed against the South African people. There was some very jarring actual footage showed which had a significant impact, but nothing like other movies in which we got to see the harm and violence close up.

Mandela and de Klerk were Nelson Mandela (Sidney Poitier) and F.W. de Klerk (Michael Caine). Nelson Mandela spent 27 years as a political prisoner and became the de facto face of the struggle for Black South African civil rights. F.W. de Klerk was a chairman of his government's party and the eventual president of SA. Though the movie got around to their interaction, it focused mostly on Mandela and rightly so.

From this movie we got an idea of Mandela's life in prison as well as his ideas, principles, and character. I've read his autobiography, so I think the movie was very fair. No two hour movie can do justice to a lifetime of work, but "Mandela and de Klerk" was a good start.